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ALL ABOUT ENGINEERING 



Uniform <wiih this Volume 

ALL ABOUT AIRSHIPS 
ALL ABOUT SHIPS 
ALL ABOUT RAILWAYS 



CASSELL &' COMPANY, LTD. 
London, New York, Toronto fi^ Melbourne 




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MAKING THE PANAMA CANAL 

Note the huge cranes employed in building the locks 



ALL ABOUT 
ENGINEERING 



A BOOK FOR BOYS ON THE GREAT 
CIVIL AND MECHANICAL ENGINEER. 
ING WONDERS OF THE WORLD 



BY 

GORDON D. KNOX 



With Two Colour Plates and many 
Illustrations from Photographs 



CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD 

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 



^ 



/ Vv'j^o 



JUN 15 13)4 



PREFACE 

It is in the belief that there are few boys throughout the 
confines of the British Empire who are not more or less 
keenly interested in engineering that I have ventured to 
add one more volume to the many that have appeared 
during the last few years on various aspects of the subject. 
The all-comprehensiveness of engineering relieves me of 
any necessity for having to explain that the book does not 
pretend to cover the whole field of the subject, even though 
it could only do so imperfectly. I have treated it rather 
personally, dealing with those branches that have made 
the strongest appeal to me, and have been forced, in con- 
sequence, to omit all reference to others that some of my 
readers may justly think should have been included. A 
word of explanation is necessary, however, as to the almost 
complete absence of any direct reference to machines as 
such. I have avoided this aspect of the subject deliberately, 
because I wished rather to emphasise the character of 
those great exploits that we group together under the 
title of engineering works. I have gratefully to acknow- 
ledge the courtesy that I have received from editors of 
many papers, and to give my best thanks to the editors 
of The Morning Post and The Standard for leave to reprint 



Vlll 



Preface 



articles of my own that appeared in their columns, to the 
editors of Engineering for the free use that they allowed me 
to make of the articles that appeared in their pages on the 
Panama Canal, and on the harnessing of the Nile, to the 
editor of The Technical World Magazine for permission 
to reproduce the most thrilling account that I have ever 
read of bridge construction, and for much other assistance, 
and to the editor of Munsey's Magazine for a striking 
quotation from a most suggestive article on the passing of 
the horse. I have borrowed my material freely from the 
experts in different subjects, and am indebted particularly 
to Mr. Charles Bright's works on the telegraph ; to Sir 
William Willcocks' accounts of the work done in Egypt 
and Mesopotamia ; to the works of Alan Stevenson and 
Price Edwards on lighthouses and seamarks ; to the reports 
of the National Physical Laboratory ; to H.M. Office of 
Works, to Messrs. L. B. Mouchel and Partners, Ltd., 
and to the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers, 
Ltd., for information on concrete ; to the books of Mr, E. 
F. Knight, Mr. G. W. MacGeorge, Mr. Athol Maudslay, 
Mr. W. A. Forbes and Mr. A. C. Burmester, and to the 
Roorkee Treatise on Civil Engineering for information on 
roads, but above all on this subject to the kindness of 
Colonel R. E. Crompton, who placed much valuable infor- 
mation at my disposal ; to Professor Frederick Soddy, who 
allowed me to make a long extract from his book on " The 
Interpretation of Radium " ; to Messrs. J. and H. Maclaren, 
Messrs. Marshall, Sons and Co., and Messrs. John Fowler 



Preface 



IX 



and Co., for information on agricultural machinery ; to Mr. 
H. W. Hughes, whose " Text-book of Coal Mining " forms 
the basis of the chapter on Mining ; to Mr. A. Beeby Thomp- 
son's " Petroleum Mining and Oil Field Development " ; Mr. 
Archibald Williams' book on " The Romance of Mining," 
to which I am indebted for many hints ; to the work of 
Mr. Philip Phillipps on the Forth Bridge and other bridges ; 
to Messrs. Griffiths and Co. for their information as to the 
work of a contractor ; to Sir William Fitzmaurice's account 
of the London Sewer System ; to Professor John Perry's 
" Spinning Tops," and to a pamphlet by Dr. James G. 
Gray and Mr. George Burnside on the Motor Gyrostat ; 
to Mr. C. Prelini's and Mr. C. S. Hill's work on Tunnelling, 
and to Mr. Carl Staniforth for kindly giving me a most 
graphic history of the manufacture of a file, on which my 
own account is based. My thanks are also due, especially, 
to my colleague, Mr. E. H. Rann, for the loan of several 
papers and books from his library, to the Secretary of the 
University of London, University College, for the informa- 
tion he gave me on the making of an engineer, and to 
Mr. L. R. Gleason for the many suggestions he put for- 
ward while reading the proofs. 

My best thanks are also due to Mrs. Marshall and 
her assistants for the rapidity and care with which they 
carried through the typing of what must have proved a 
troublesome manuscript. 

Apart from these acknowledgments, I am conscious 
that I have borrowed also from other sources, as will be 



X 



Preface 



seen from the references in the text. I have made a special 
point, where possible, of quoting from the actual accounts 
of those engineers who have left records of their own works, 
as, for instance, in the case of the Severn Tunnel, partly 
for their intrinsic interest, and partly that those who wish 
to pursue the subject farther may know where they can get 
the information at first hand. There must, I am afraid, 
prove to be cases where I have found it impossible to 
acknowledge my sources of information, as in the course 
of reading one acquires facts and forgets whence they have 
been derived. In conclusion, I would state that I have 
made every effort to avoid falling into mistakes while 
treating a technical subject popularly, but in view of the 
extensiveness of the subject, I would ask my readers' 
indulgence for any errors that they may detect. 

Gordon D. Knox. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

1. Historical i 

2. The Panama Canal 12 

3. Harnessing the Nile : The Great Dams at Assouan 

AND elsewhere, AND WHAT THEY HAVE MEANT 

TO Egypt 29 

4. Irrigation in Mesopotamia — Watering the Gold- 

fields AT Kalgoorlie — Great Schemes in 
Canada — How Water is Brought to the World's 
Cities 47 

5. Power and its Sources : Wind, Coal, Steam, 

Electricity, Oil, Gas, the Sun and the Atom 66 

6. Roads : The Work of the Romans — A Blind 

Bridge Builder — The Road Surface — Historic 
Roads 85 

7. Town Planning : The Choice of Byzantium — The 

Design of Australia's Capital . . . 100 

8. London : Its Water Supply, its Sewers, and 

Electric Service 106 

9. Concrete Construction : A Visit to the New 

Stationery Stores — A Skyscraper — The Nature 
AND Uses of Concrete 123 



xii Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

10. Breaking Virgin Soil— AGRicuLxubAL Machinery 

AND ITS Uses 142 

11. Mining : The Construction of a Coal Mine — 

Digging for Gold— How Oil is Secured . . 152 

12. Electricity and Water : The Control of Niagara — 

Puget Sound — Facilities in Scotland — The 
Artificial Manufacture of Nitrates . . 167 

13. Testing : Work at the National Physical Labo- 

ratory — A New System of Detecting Strains 

IN Engineering Materials .... 182 

14. Steel : The Work of the Foundry — How a 

Common File is Manufactured. . . . 205 

15.- Bridge-Building: The Forth Bridge — ^The Tay 
Bridge — ^The Bridge Across the Menai Straus — 
The Brooklyn Bridge — ^Transporter and Swing 
Bridges — ^Transmarine Bridges — ^A Wonderful 
Feat 216 

16; The Gyrostat : Its Theory and its Application 

TO Various Inventions 243 

17. Cable Laying : The Story of the First Atlantic 

Cable — Strange Events Connected with the 
Discovery of Palmyra 250 

18. Marine Salvage : The Milwaukee and the Suevic — 

Salving Bullion from the Oceana . . . 265 

19. Lighthouses : The Eddystone and the Skerry- 

voRE — Pile Lighthouses and Buoys . . 283 

20. Railways : Aerial Railways— Swinging Rail- 

ways AND Mono-rails 302 



Contents xiii 

CHAITEK PAGE 

21. The Work of a Contractor : Construction in 

Africa, London, Chili, Russia and New 
Brunswick 310 

22. Tunnelling : The Mont Cenis Tunnel — The Simplon 

Tunnel — The Severn Tunnel — ^The Thames 
Tunnel — ^The East River Gas Tunnel . . 317 

23. Shipbuilding : The Yards — Question of Power 

AND Safety 332 

24. Docks, Harbours and Breakwaters : An Account 

of an Imaginary Voyage, Illustrating Some 
Different Types 349 

25. The Making of an Engineer .... 358 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Making the Panama Canal {colour) 



Frontispiece 



The Engine of the Nineteenth Century 

The Engine of the Twentieth Century 

Gigantic Steam Shovel 

A Track-Shifter at Work 

Building Material for the Nile Dam 

Heightening the Assouan Dam . . ' 

One of the Pumping Engines of the Coolgardie 
Water Supply Scheme 

A Motor Worked by the Sun's Rays 

A Wonderful Engineering Feat 

Saw Cutting Wooden Blocks for City Streets 

Five Humphrey Pumps Working at Chingford 
Reservoir 

At Work on a London Sewer . 

Construction of a London Sewer 

An Electric Generating Station : The Turbine 
Room . . ... 

An Electric Generating Station : The Boiler House 

A New Method of Building 

Thrilling Moment in the Building of a Skyscraper 

A Pontoon made of Concrete . 

Concrete Bridge at Rome • The Broken Scaffolding 



FACING PAGE 

6 



10 

i6 

i8 

34 
42 

58 
76 
76 
90 

108 
114 
116 

120 
120 
124 
130 

138 
138 



XVI 



List of Illustrations 



FACING PAGE 

Coal Mining: Big Winding Drum with the Cable 
that raises the cage 



Coal Mining : Men Waiting at the Foot of the Shaft 

An Oil Well Spouting 

Do We Progress by Degrees or by Leaps ? 
A New Method of Testing Strains (colour) 
Steel Works Aglow with Hot Metal 



154 
154 
162 
168 
202 
206 



Steel Plate Rolling 208 

A Bridge of One Raw Hide Rope at Uri, India . 216 

The Forth Bridge in Course of Construction . . 222 

Bridge Building : Placing into Position one of the 

Immense Uprights 226 

Bridge Building : Putting a Cross Beam into Place 230 

Runcorn Transporter Bridge 236 

The Deck of a Cable Ship 252 

Laying the Cable 252 

Building Beachy Head Lighthouse .... 300 

A Rack Railway on Mount Pilatus . . . . 306 

Drilling Holes in the Side Wall of a Tunnel . 318 

Different Methods of Tunnelling .... 322 

The Cunard Steamer " Aquitania " on the Stocks . 336 



ALL ABOUT ENGINEERING 



CHAPTER I 

HISTORICAL 

The history of engineering may fairly be regarded as the 
history of the world's civilisation, and a good case could 
be made out for the view that it is through the engineering 
and mechanical skill of the few that man has reached to 
his present state of pre-eminence. It is a matter that 
requires no argument to show that the leisure which man 
has acquired has been won because he has used his brain 
to supplement the weakness of his physical strength, and 
it is at first sight an attractive enough view that it is 
because man exercised his special faculties that they grew 
and developed and made him pre-eminent. Such an inter- 
pretation is not, when rightly considered, inconsistent 
with the teaching of any school of biology ; it can be 
brought within the scope of most hypotheses, and I wiU 
admit at once that I should have been inclined only a 
year ago to look on this as the simplest way of explain- 
ing man's progress, referring the development of man's 
brain to the fact that the force of circumstances compelled 
him to use his faculties, and that the race was propagated 
only or chiefly by those who enjoyed a slight differential 
advantage in these respects over their fellows. I had the 



2 All About Engineering 

good fortune, however, last year to be present at the 
British Association meeting at Dundee, when Professor 
EUiot Smith read his presidential address before the section 
of Anthropology, In this, if I understood him right, he 
showed that it was rather the developing brain that moulded 
man's progress than his environment that forced his brain 
to undergo development. I must not make Professor 
Elliot Smith responsible for my own deductions. From 
the standpoint of my present subject, I should like to 
argue that the engineer has not only provided us with the 
material conditions that make civilisation possible, but that 
by drawing men's minds to things mechanical, he has 
forced their brains to develop, and in this way, too, has 
assisted him in his upward progress. The facts, however, 
do not fit in with this view, and we must avoid the tempta- 
tion of saying, " so much the worse for the facts," and 
we shall be rewarded by getting the grander and larger 
idea that the brain is an organ spontaneously undergoing 
development, not perhaps independently of man's environ- 
ment, but compelling him to secure an environment that 
shall be adapted to his requirements. And it is in per- 
forming this task that the engineer finds the scope for 
his greatest achievements. 

Let us go back to the dawn of history. Glancing at 
the shattered remnants of the Stone Ages, we can catch 
a glimpse of the days when the engineer had no existence, 
of the days when the only roads were those trodden down 
by the feet of men and the hoofs of animals, when the 
only bridges were the casual tree trunks that had fallen 
across the stream, when the only dwelling was the natural 
cave. Of the dawn of engineering we have no record ; it 



Historical 3 

is only in imagination that we can conceive of the birth 
of the idea of the wheel, of the wedge, and the development 
of the latter into its more complete and perfect form, the 
screw. We can speculate, if we care to, as to how men 
hit on these epoch-making ideas, but we have no knowledge 
of when or where they arose. 

We shall be on surer ground if we try to estimate the 
engineering conditions of the old world as we know it from 
the remains that have come down to us from the Greeks 
and Romans. The Greeks, curiously enough, were not 
great engineers ; possibly this was because of the con- 
tempt with which they regarded experimental investiga- 
tions, or it may have been because as a race they were 
unattracted by the mechanical aspects of life. They were 
cunning artificers. We could realise that, even if we had 
none of their works of art to serve as a guide, by the 
account that Homer gives us of the wonderful crafts- 
manship of Achilles' shield ; and I cannot help thinking 
that there was something of the engineer in Homer, for 
he describes the building of Odysseus' boat fondly and 
appreciatively ; but otherwise, except in architecture, the 
Greeks left behind them nothing really notable in the way 
of an engineering feat. 

With the Romans it was different. They, if you will, 
were engineers of no mean order of skill. They built roads 
that have lasted throughout the ages ; they constructed 
aqueducts to bring water to their cities ; they drove 
tunnels through the living rock, having learnt how to 
soften the rock face at times by burning it, and at times 
by pouring vinegar on to the heated surface ; they were 
skilled miners, having learnt this art, perhaps, from the 



4 All About Engineering 

PhcEnicians ; and that they had born in them the spirit 
of the engineer is surely shown by the way in which they 
improvised a navy when they needed one to fight the 
Carthaginians. As bridge-builders, their skill was un- 
rivalled, and it was a skill that was to be found not only 
among professional engineers, but among their generals, 
as those of us who have struggled through the famous 
account of how Csesar built his bridge across the Rhine have 
doubtless appreciated with no little bitterness of spirit. 

What an amazing thing it was that neither the Greeks 
nor the Romans ever reached the modern conception of 
science ! The Romans must again and again, without 
knowing it, have conducted scientific experiments, but the 
idea never seems to have struck them that experiment 
must be the basis of all true knowledge. There must, 1 
think, have been exceptions to this sweeping condemnation 
of the ancients. It is inconceivable to me, at any rate, 
that men such as Archimedes, to whom, by the way, it is 
conventional to credit the invention of the screw, should 
not have deliberately planned experiments. There is no 
reason, so far as I know, to doubt the story that he suc- 
ceeded in focusing the rays of the sun on to the mooring 
ropes of an enemy's fleet and set them afire, and it is 
impossible to believe that he could have had the know- 
ledge necessary for this feat, or the many others attributed 
to him, unless he had gained it by experiment. But such 
men as he were isolated units. No one can accuse Lucretius 
of having planned an experiment, let alone of having made 
one, and yet, like the other philosophers, he based a whole 
system of natural philosophy on first principles evolved 
from his brain 1 



Historical 5 

From the great days of Rome, we can pass at a stride 
to the early years of the seventeenth century, Gilbert, 
it is true, had written a book, " De Magnete," that was 
destined in a way to form the basis of electrical develop- 
ment ; but men had added little to the traditions of engi- 
neering skill the Romans left behind them. Then came 
the results of the marvellous Elizabethan era, and Bacon 
crystallised out for the world the principles of induc- 
tive logic that turned men's minds from the barren syllo- 
gisms and speculations of the schoolmen — as the followers 
of Aristotle were called — to question Nature herself. Men 
became curious about all manner of subjects. They met 
together in a spirit of scientific curiosity, and at last the 
Royal Society was born, a body formed to find out accu- 
rately what was known, and to add to knowledge by 
making experiments. 

It is possible, I think, to assign two chief causes for 
this development ; the first, unquestionably, was the in- 
vention of printing, by which it became easy cheaply to 
disseminate knowledge, and the other the researches of the 
alchemists and astrologers. Both of these classes of investi- 
gators were forced to observe closely, and the alchemists, at 
any rate, were obliged, in their researches after transmuta- 
tion and the philosopher's stone, to conduct experiments. 
In any case, no matter what the cause, the publication of 
Bacon's book, the " Novum Organum," marks the commence- 
ment of the new era in science. Since Bacon, there has only 
been the development of a single new idea, and even that, 
if we look closely enough, is contained in Bacon's work ; it 
is the importance of accurate measurement. Experiment, 
observation and measurement constitute the triple founda- 



6 All About Engineering 

tion on which science and engineering have been based. 
If you will, you can add a fourth — ^imagination. 

It was a long while before the ideas of Bacon bore any 
practical fruit. The new philosophers had to straighten out 
the crude ideas that were current before they could give 
the practical men anything they could take hold of and 
adapt for everyday use. There was Franklin, for instance, 
experimenting with electricity to have his lightning con- 
ductors described as " devil's rods " ; Newton, evolving 
his theory of gravitation, but so poor with it all that he 
had to appeal to the Royal Society to have his subscription 
remitted ; Boyle, conducting researches on the pressures of 
gases ; and it was not till about one hundred and fifty 
years after Bacon had set men on the right track, that 
the engineer could look to science to assist him in his 
work. 

When the light came at last, it came with a flash; 
fortunately, too, just about the time when England had 
a dim glimmering of what it meant to her to find coal 
and iron together. And with the ideas of science rapidly 
crystallising out, men woke up to a realisation of the fact 
that the engineers were admitting them to a wealth of 
power based on coal and iron and steam. It was a wonder- 
ful find when they at last realised what a treasure-house 
of power they had tapped in coal, and they were able 
in this mysterious substance to draw upon the rays that 
the sun had been sending down on to their country in the 
far distant aeons of the geological past, and not unnatur- 
ally, they set to work to spend it freely. It is only now, 
prodigals that we are, that we are beginning to ask our- 
selves what we shall do when we come to the end of our 




7/7,\i * 



Historical 7 

capital, hovvT we shall replace it, whether we have a right 
to use up in these generations a treasure to which we have 
no more claim than our ancestors and our descendants. 
The steam-engine arrived ; the canal reached the height 
of its prosperity, to be ousted in part, at any rate, by 
the locomotive with the rails that made it possible. And 
still science was steadily working away perfecting its 
chemistry, its knowledge of elements and compounds, 
groping after the fundamental phenomena of electricity, 
concerning itself with abstract problems, such as the nature 
of heat, and all the time laying the foundation on which 
the engineer was destined to build. Meanwhile, the 
engineer was working out the manufacture of steel and 
was applying it to all sorts and kinds of machinery, there- 
by vastly increasing the productivity of the individual 
worker, and adding to the wealth of the land, not without 
arousing the furious antagonism of the handicraftsmen 
displaced^ Slowly the steam locomotive developed, and 
little more than a hundred years ago, after having 
conquered on land, it gained an even greater victory on 
sea. A revolution was started in ship-building, to be fol- 
lowed by a still more stupendous change when ships were 
built of steel instead of wood. And, electricity was creep- 
ing in, indicating in no way at the outset the developments 
that were to be. The telegraph lines were laid, first over- 
land and then under water — a triumph so great, that to 
the present day several people, with no justification, refuse 
to believe as regards the lirs't Atlantic cable that any 
message but the first ever went across the wires ; and in 
the 'fifties men made the great discovery that the various 
forms of energy could be expressed in terms of each other, 



8 All About Engineering 

and could be converted the one into the other. How the 
world has leapt ahead since those days. Electricity, 
revolting like Jove against his father, Saturn, now threatens 
to oust steam, at any rate, as a direct motive power, from 
the field. The engineers with their modern appliances 
have developed the internal combustion engine where the 
explosive mixture of air and gas exercises a direct drive 
on the piston. Coal has been forced to give up its gas, 
and this, too, has been used as a direct source of power. 
With the vast forces at our command, we have not hesitated 
to build mighty vessels, to attempt great feats that our 
ancestors would have found beyond their strength. We 
are starting to harness the great waterfalls, and are pressing 
them into our service. We have not hesitated to sever 
the two Americas, calling again on another branch of science 
— medicine — to make it possible. We have thrown great 
dams across the rivers and brought prosperity to countries 
that we found overburdened with debt. We have set lights 
in the midst of the sea to guide our vessels safely to port. 
We have thrown bridges over chasms and over straits where 
formerly men had to be content to make long journeys to 
pass round. Even the Alps have been pierced by our 
tunnels. The world has been linked into a conglomerate 
whole by the railways and the telegraphs that we have laid 
across its surface. We have rescued our sunken treasures 
from the deep, brought waters to our cities from vast dis- 
tances, or carried our pipes over miles of dry and thirsty 
deserts. We have attempted and are on thexway to achieve 
the very conquest of the air itself. These are but a few of 
the feats of which our engineers can boast, and they look 
forward to still greater triumphs. Let me quote to you what 



Historical 9 

an enthusiastic American, Mr. Herbert N, Casson, has to 
say of one aspect of the future in Munsey's Magazine. 
With pardonable zeal, he writes of the achievement as if it 
were American, and America has, indeed, made her con- 
tributions of moment to the history of engineering. 

" This," he states, " is the day of big units. One freight- 
car carries forty tons. One Erie canal-boat carries a hundred 
thousand bushels of wheat. One grain ship on the Great 
Lakes carries two hundred and fifty thousand bushels. One 
train carries the grain that was grown on six thousand 
acres. One grain elevator holds six million bushels. One 
flour-mill at Minneapolis fills seventeen thousand barrels 
with flour in a single twenty-four-hour day. One single steel 
girder in the Woolworth Building in New York was so 
heavy that sixteen horses were required to haul it from 
the freight yard. One single copper mine — the Red Jacket 
— has engines of eight thousand horse-power, which hoist 
ten-ton cars of ore to the surface of the ground in ninety 
seconds from five thousand feet below. One single iron- 
ore steamer — the Augustus B. Wolvin — loads ten thousand 
tons in eighty-nine minutes, and unloads them in four 
hours. One single passenger steamship — the Lusitania, or 
Mauretania — hurls herself through the waters of the Atlantic 
with the power of seventy thousand horses. This is the day 
of tonnage. The average American iron and steel plant in 
1870 produced a little more than four thousand tons ; in 
1913 the average plant will produce about sixty thousand 
tons. The output of Pittsburg alone is equal, in tonnage, to 
a Great Pyramid every four weeks. It means in just a 
single year thirty-five thousand trains of cars, fifty cars 
to a train, fifty tons to a car. Ninety million tons a year. 



10 All About Engineering 

All the horses and mules in the United States could not 
budge the annual tonnage of Pittsburg. 

" One single American company — the United States 
Steel Corporation— smelts in one year twenty-five million 
tons of iron ore ; and it handles this stupendous output 
from ore-bed to finished product without the use of horses. 
If the iron and steel business were on a horse-power basis, 
steel rails would not sell for twenty-eight dollars a ton — 
less than one and one-half cents per pound. 

" Talk about tonnage ! So vast have our American 
industrial enterprises become that the total freight now 
carried by rail and ship is fully two billion tons a year." 

Or you may look at the matter differently and consider 
the chief underlying aims of modern engineering to be to 
enable a man to be in different places at one and the same 
time, and to transport him from place to place with the 
minimum expenditure of time. Consider the telegraph and 
telephone, for instance ! The personality of a single man 
can be exerted in a single hour in every business centre of 
the world if he has the service of the telephone and cable 
companies. The Press, with its vast collecting and dis- 
tributing agencies, endorses the view that the essence of 
our engineer-built civilisation is the immediate and universal 
distribution of news, the annihilation, in fact, of space and 
time. Primitive man, by his weapons, by his sling and his 
arrow, groping at this idea, made possible his ascent from 
the brute. Civilised man, carrying the process farther, has 
attained an eminence and a dominance over Nature that 
would have been unthinkable to any age save that in which 
we live. 

Great Britain need grudge no other nation a fair recog- 



Historical ii 

nition of their achievements. In the following pages, you 
will read of the exploits of some of our great engineers, 
and of the mighty feats they have carried through all 
over the world. We can be proud of our engineers, and 
of what they have done. They have led the world since 
the days when the art of engineering revived, and, for my 
part, I am confident that the work we still have to do in 
the world is not yet accomplished. If, however, we are 
to retain our pride of place, it can only be by merit, by 
doing the work that lies to our hand honestly as good 
craftsmen and as good artists, and by showing that same 
enterprise in the future that our ancestors showed in the 
past, when by their deeds they raised England and the 
Empire to the premier place among the powers. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PANAMA CANAL 

Few great undertakings become familiar in our mouths 
as household words unless they appeal to our imagination 
both by their grandiose conception and by their intrinsic 
importance. The fame of the Panama Canal as a colossal 
undertaking has been a matter of common knowledge for 
over thirty years, and by the time the lines that I am 
writing now appear in print it seems likely that the world 
will have learnt that their three-century-old dream has 
materialised as a fact, and that the great ships will be 
passing to and fro on the narrow thread of water that 
now for the first time unites two mighty oceans. The 
achievement rightly fires the imagination. Rumours from 
the Canal Zone tell of the great forces used in rending the 
native earth ; of the mighty engines toiling and groaning 
and clattering incessantly at their tasks ; of the labourers 
swung across the vast cut lOO feet up in the air in cement 
buckets, taking this aerial pathway to their homes as 
unconcernedly as the suburbanite calls at the station for 
his train ; of the gallant fight put up against accident, 
disease and the forces of Nature — all with the glamour of 
the tropics flung athwart the scene. So much for the one 
aspect of the work. The other is the saving in human 
effort that the completed Canal will for all time ensure. 
Ships now have a perilous passage to travel if they wish 



The Panama Canal 



13 



to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific, so much so that 
it has been said that no man is a seaman till he has thrice 
rounded the notorious Cape Horn, the southern Hmit of 
South America. Here are a few distances as they stand by 
to-day's route, and as they will be when this book is in 
your hand : 

New York to San Francisco . 
New York to Peru 
New York to Auckland 
New York to Sydney . . 

Or take another table. Panama is the centre of the 
Pacific coast. Let us consider the distance it is from the 
chief ports of the world to Panama, first via Cape Horn 
and then via the Canal. They are as follows : 



Via Cape Horn 


Via Panama 


13,107 miles 


5,294 miles 


9,700 


3.359 .. 


11,771 .. 


8,610 „ 


13.051 „ 


9.709 .. 



To Panama 


Via 


Via 


Saving 


from 


Cape Horn 


the Canal 


by Canal 


Antwerp . . 


. 11,383 miles 


4,463 miles 


6,920 miles 


Charleston 


. 10,803 


1,611 


9.192 » 


Galveston . . 


. 11,391 .. 


1,545 ., 


9,846 „ 


Genoa 


. 11,143 ., 


5,229 „ 


5,914 ,. 


Hamburg . . 


. 11,614 


5.054 .. 


6,560 „ 


Havana 


. 10,682 „ 


1,425 ,. 


9.257 » 


Havre 


. 11,156 „ 


4,648 „ 


6,508 „ 


Liverpool . . 


. 11,261 


4.575 .. 


6,686 „ 


Marseilles . . 


. 10,985 


5.071 .. 


5,914 „ 


New Orleans 


. 10,286 ,, 


1,425 „ 


8,861 „ 


New York 


. 10,851 „ 


2,017 


8,834 ,. 


Southampton 


. II. 137 M 


4,608 „ 


6,529 „ 



With these figures before you, you will not find it diffi- 
cult to beheve that the building of the Panama Canal is 
the greatest engineering achievement of the world. The 



14 AH About Engineering 

idea of severing the two Americas by driving a waterway 
straight from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the 
Pacific has appealed to the imagination of man since the 
day that it was proposed in 1520 — some thirty years after 
the existence of the New World became known to the Old. 
For over three centuries the project remained a dream, 
the idle fancy of the visionary, and it was not till the nine- 
teenth century — the century above all its predecessors of 
practical achievement — that a serious survey was made to 
consider whether the undertaking might not be feasible. 
To the Frenchman, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who triumphantly 
severed the isthmus joining Africa and Asia by the Suez 
Canal, but who died a broken-hearted man when catas- 
trophe overtook his operations at Panama, belongs the 
credit of having converted the world to a belief in the 
possibility of the scheme. The problem was a stupendous 
one. From deep water to deep water the distance through 
which the monster ditch has had to be dug is 50 miles — 
more than twice the distance it is from Dover to Calais. 
On either side, the mean sea-level is the same ; but while 
the Atlantic Ocean has a lazily rising tide that swings 
through a bare range of 2 feet, the high level of the Pacific 
towers 20 feet above its low level. The land at Panama 
is rocky and mountainous. A section of the route shows 
how the hills to be traversed rise over 300 feet above the 
level of the sea ; but any sketch is silent as to the fact that 
the work has all to be done with the broiling heat of a 
tropical sun beating down on the workmen, and it tells 
nothing of malaria or of the dreaded yellow fever, the terror 
of merchantman, man-of-war and buccaneer, that swept 
away the labourers and the engineers who tried to carry 



The Panama Canal 15 

out the designs of the inspired Frenchman, the great 
de Lesseps. 

Of the different routes proposed, of the controversies, 
of the financial difficulties, of the startling way in which 
the Republic of Panama carried out a bloodless revolution 
to secure the adoption of the route running through their 
country, and of the earlier attempts I have no space to 
write. Of the many dramatic incidents that heralded the 
birth of the Canal, none is more so than the fact that this 
great undertaking, designed to facilitate the peaceful flow 
of commerce, was finally decided on by the needs of war. 
In the spring of 1890 war broke out between the United 
States and Spain. At the time, the battleship Oregon, per- 
haps the finest in the United States Navy, was at San 
Francisco, and in order to get to the scene of operations, 
she had to undertake the long and perilous journey of 
13,400 miles round Cape Horn, instead of the 4,600 miles 
that would have been necessary had the Canal been open. 
The incident struck popular American sentiment, and at 
once the people of the States clamoured that their Govern- 
ment should undertake the building of the Canal. 

Many troubles had to be surmounted, and then there 
was a long-sustained, wearisome debate as to the type of 
canal that should be built. The obvious policy was to cut 
a canal down to the level of the sea, guarded with great 
locks at either end owing to the changing levels of the 
water, but this would have involved an enormously greater 
amount of excavation than even the present Canal has 
necessitated ; and at last the scheme was adopted whereby 
the ships coming in from the sea are drawn into great 
locks, raised as they lie between the lock gates 85 feet, and 



i6 All About Engineering 

then, having passed between the gorges of the land, are 
lowered back to the sea level of the opposite ocean. 

The Canal as a Whole 

To appreciate the work, it will be best to take a bird's- 
eye view of the Canal. Roughly, it runs south-east from 
Limon Bay to the Bay of Panama. The entrance is guarded 
by a great breakwater nearly 2 miles long, and the first 
6f miles of the Canal are at sea-level. Then the Gatun 
locks and dam are reached. These are three twin locks, 
which hft the war vessel, the liner or the tramp 85 feet 
on to the level of the vast lake that has been formed by 
damming up the river Chagres. To Mile 39, the Canal runs 
along at this level, passing through the hills until it reaches 
the Pedro Miguel locks and dams. Here the boat is 
lowered to the level of the next great lake, the Miraflores 
Lake, formed by impounding the waters of three rivers, 
and to be kept at a level of 55 feet. At Mile 41 the Mira- 
flores locks are reached, and the boat is there lowered to 
the level of the Pacific Ocean ; and at Mile 50, the dredged 
passage which has been driven through the Bay of Panama 
ends in the deep water of the Pacific, and the ship is free 
once again to proceed on her business to the uttermost 
ends of the earth. 

The Excavations 

Let us turn from the accomplished fact to consider the 
work achieved. By the time that the last shovelful of 
earth and rock has been removed, no fewer than 200,000,000 
cubic yards will have been excavated. I have been trying 
to realise what this vast mass of earth means, and perhaps 
the clearest way will be to consider what we could do with 



The Panama Canal 



17 



such a volume of earth. Supposing that we used it to 
pave a causeway round the world ; we could build the 
causeway i yard high and 4I yards wide. Or let us take 
the most recent estimate of the world's ships of over 
100 tons burden. The quantity of earth excavated would 
weigh in the aggregate about eight times the total of 
ships owned by all the nations. All the many resources 
of the engineers have been brought into play to deal with 
this stupendous quantity of material. Twenty dredgers 
have been in use, some of them scooping up the mud in 
their great buckets, others sucking it up \nth pipes, but 
the bulk of the work has been done by the monster steam 
" navvies," or shovels. Here is the list of the apparatus 
in use at the time of wTiting for the dry excavation : 

Locomotives from 117 tons downwards . . 315 

Steam shovels up to 105 tons . . . . 98 

Wagons and miscellaneous cars . . . . 4,339 

Lidgerwood ploughs . . . . . . . . 30 

Spreaders . , . . . . . . . . . . 25 

Track shifters . . . . . . . . . . 10 

Pile drivers . . . . . . . . , . 19 

Chum drills . . . . . . . . . . 265 

Tripod drills . . , . . . . . . . 295 

Cranes . . . , . . . . . . . , 57 

The steam navvy is a familiar sight in excavation 
work. As the accompanying photograph shows, it consists 
essentially of a crane and a large scoop that tears its way 
into the side of a cliff or pounces on the level soil, and then 
carries its load of stone and rubble and earth into one oi 
the wagons to be carted away. You may have seen the 
steam navvy at work on a railway cutting in England, but, 
c 



18 All About Engineering 

even so, it only gives you a poor idea of these engines as 
they were in use at Panama. The Kinemacolor Company, 
with their usual resource, however, have brought before the 
Enghsh public the romance of the Canal building. London 
audiences have watched the scene amazed. There are 
the steam navvies, with their shovels swinging in the air, 
opening and closing like the ravening beak of some pre- 
historic monster bird, pouncing on their horrid meal of 
mud and stones, and disgorging it into the trucks ; there 
again are the dredges, diving with their swinging beams, 
bringing up their load of rubble v/ith the water pouring 
out in spurts. The world has had brought before it the 
high pressure hoses, through which the water hurls itself 
at the rock face, penetrating the cavities, loosening the soil 
in every crack, and bringing the cliff face down crashing 
in ruins to its foot. It is a stirring picture of the resource 
of man pitted against the resistant inertia of Nature. And 
all this fuss and bustle and turmoil spells energy triumphant. 
During the construction of the Canal, the record day's 
work for a steam shovel has reached the amazing total of 
4,823 cubic yards. 

One of the chief problems before the engineer has been 
to get rid of the mass of excavated material, otherwise he 
would have been " snowed under " by his own exertions. 
The rubbish has been dumped by being tipped into the 
outside skin of the various dams, into swamps for purposes 
of reclamation, or into the breakwaters at Colon and Panama. 
The track-lifter, again, is one of the many curious and 
ingenious machines pressed into service. Tipping, it is 
obvious, can only be carried on by continually moving 
the line of track, and placing it on the bank just formed 



The Panama Canal 19 

by the rubbish that has been shot out. The track-shifter 
consists, as the illustration shows, of a car, on the front end 
of which is a rigid A-frame with a swinging mast. A swing 
boom projects 30 feet from the car, and this carries tackle 
so arranged that the rails can be grabbed by two pairs of 
powerful tongs. Wlien it is desired to shift the rails, the 
track-lifter starts from the free end of the rails, grabs them 
and their ties, lifts them clear of the ground, and shifts 
them 2 1 or 3 feet to the side, where they rest on the ground 
that has just been dumped there. The track-lifter then 
moves back and throws another section. This makes fairly 
easy reading, but it must be remembered that much of the 
excavating work has been done in rock that is too hard 
for the steam shovels to work in. To surmount this diffi- 
culty, a high pressure water-hose, as I have described, and 
drills have been employed. Holes are drilled into the rock 
about 24 feet deep. A small charge of dynamite is then 
exploded at the bottom of each hole to enlarge it. This 
is followed with a charge of between 70 lbs. and 200 lbs. 
of dynamite, and this, on being exploded, cracks up and 
loosens the rock sufficiently for the steam shovel to be 
able to seize and carry it away. On an average, the 
enormous quantity of about 500,000 lbs. of dynamite have 
been used in a month. 

Mr. W. H. Foster, in the course of an able article he 
wrote in Scribbler's Magazine, describes the care with 
which the dynamite has to be handled, premature explo- 
sions having on more than one occasion occurred. He writes : 
" ' Seeing the sights ? ' piped the hulk of a man in an 
unexpectedly squeaky voice. ' Well, you'U see one in a 
minute. Just going to hft about 75,000 cubic yards off 



20 All About Engineering 

the top of that hill back there. Accidents ? Well, yes, 
one or two. That's Bas Obisbo. Put twenty-six men 
into clear there at one shot, and winged some sixty more.' 
His left hand involuntarily went to his empty right sleeve, 
and I knew that he had a vivid recollection of the disaster. 
' Never knew what fired it,' he said. ' Some thought it 
was a high-temperature layer of limestone about 30 feet 
down. Some said short circuit. All I know is that she blew 
about four hours too soon, and 'twas something wicked. 
Now, dynamite is very weird stuff,' he continued. ' You 
don't know just what it will do, and we have accidents 
right along ; can't seem to help it. The more I know about 
dynamite, the more I find I don't know. The worst scare 
I ever got, though, outside of being blown up myself, was 
when the President came through here on an inspection 
car. Orders had been given to have all switches spiked, 
all loaded holes fired, and no more to be loaded. All powder 
was to be put back in the magazines and locked up. All 
was fine as frog's hair as far as Empire, when I happened 
to look up, and there was a fool nigger sliding down 
into the cut right in front of the car with a 50-pound box of 
dynamite on his head. He didn't even know where he 
got it, but any way he dropped it. Well, sir, I expected 
to see that inspection car and the high and mighties and 
the President of the United States just disappear ; but 
they didn't. I've known dynamite to go off, though, with 
less excuse than that had. These steam shovels are great 
things, aren't they ? ' he asked, after a lengthy scanning 
up and down the animated hues of operation between the 
walls of greenish-grey stone and red gravel. ' Just like big, 
patient elephants,' he went on, ' they do just whatever the 



The Panama Canal 21 

puny little man tells 'em to. Let's go over and see " Baldy." 
He's the best shovel engineer on the job when he's sober.' 
We made our way over the pilot-cut and neared ' Baldy's ' 
shovel, which was groaning under the weight of a 20-ton 
boulder. This it laid on a car with motherly care, and, 
with a final caress, swung back to look, in a near-sighted 
way, for another dipperful." 

An aspect of the excavation work that has continually 
hampered the engineers has been the frequent occurrence 
of shdes and slips in the excavated Canal. The slides are of 
two kinds. One is due to soft material sliding over on the 
harder material below, and the other kind occurs when a 
soft layer underneath is squeezed up by the weight of the 
sides. The latter of these you can reproduce for yourself 
by taking two boards and placing them close together 
on wet, clayey soil. When you stand on the boards, the 
mud oozes up owing to the pressure of your weight between 
the boards. The importance of the slides can be appreciated 
from the statement that up to the end of 1911, over 9,000,000 
cubic yards of extra excavation had to be made on account 
of them. 

I could write much more of the difficulties met with 
and the ingenuity exercised in excavation work, but we 
must pass on to consider the great dams, leaving the state- 
ment to speak for itself, that the record movement of trains 
in connection with the Culebra cut alone (you can identify 
the cut on the plan) occurred on March 11, 1911, when 
333 loaded trains left the cutting, representing 79,484 
cubic yards of excavation. The handhng of this great 
volume of traffic over roughly-laid lines was in itself a 
triumph of organisation. 



22 All About Engineering 

The Dams 

There is something awe-inspiring about the five great 
dams which, by keeping the water under strict control, 
have made the construction of the Panama Canal possible. 
There are one at Gatun, two at Pedro Miguel, and two at 
the Miraflores locks. The Gatun dam is the largest of the 
five. It is 750 feet long, it rises 115 feet above sea-level, 
is 2,100 feet wide at the bottom, 400 feet wide at high 
water level, has a volume of 21,000,000 cubic yards, and 
forms a lake about the size of Rutland, being 104,960 acres 
in area, and containing 206,000,000,000 cubic feet of water. 
When you consider the torrential rainfall of the district, 
it is possible to form a conception of the titanic forces 
that have to be controlled. The Chagres River that is 
held up by this great barrage can become a raging torrent, 
that from back beyond the dawn of history has been sweep- 
ing every obstacle before it down to the sea. On one recorded 
occasion it has risen 40 feet (the height of a large house) 
in 24 hours, a fact not to be wondered at when it is remem- 
bered that the maximum rainfalls recorded are, for three 
minutes, 2*46 inches ; for an hour, 5*86 inches ; and for 
24 hours, 10 "86 inches. When 6 inches of rain fell in parts 
of Norfolk last year in 24 hours the whole district was 
flooded out. To deal with these great forces, the strength 
of construction has had to be enormous. The method 
employed has been to build two great outside waUs of 
concrete, rock and such-like material, and to fill the space 
between these with matter of a silty nature pumped from 
the bed of the Chagres River. At the beginning of 191 2, 
water was allowed to rise in the lake that was formed by 



The Panama Canal 23 

such a barrage across the hills, and on February i8th of that 
year the old Panama Railway became submerged, and a 
portion of the Canal began to take definite shape. Obviously, 
it is necessary to allow an outlet for the waters of the great 
lake, and for this a special channel, named with charac- 
teristic technical genius as the Spillway, faced with cement, 
has been cut 300 feet wide and 1,200 feet long, to conduct 
the overflow at the rate, if need be, of 154,000 cubic feet a 
second back into the old bed of the Chagres River. Sluice 
gates controlled by electrical power derived from turbines are 
installed to regulate the quantity of water in the lake, and 
as an indication of the completeness with which the river 
has been tamed, it is estimated that even if the sluice 
gates were closed the heaviest rainfall known would only 
raise the waters of the lake by i foot in 9 hours. Of the 
other dams, which are similar, but smaller, there is no 
need to write. 

The Locks 

The locks of the Canal and the work they are called 
upon to do must stir the imagination of the dullest minds. 
Conceive, if you can, of any crane that could pick up a 
mammoth liner and raise it 85 feet, and then remember 
that this is the work that the locks of the Panama Canal 
will be doing day by day from the time that the works 
are open to traffic. The locks in all cases are in duplicate, 
so that one may be used for eastward-bound and the other 
for westward-bound trafhc. Each is 1,000 feet long and 
no feet wide. Tunnels in the side walls of the locks and 
in the central partition that divides them allow for the 
inflow and outflow of the water on which the ships will be 



24 All About Engineering 

raised and lowered, and the locks have been designed lor 
the lifting to proceed at the rate of 2 feet a minute. The 
gates are in essence the same as all lock gates, and are 
constructed on the principle that has been known from 
before the days of Solomon, so that the pressure of water 
on their faces brings them the more closely together, making 
them present a V-shaped surface to the force of the water. 
The most interesting features of the locks at Panama are 
the elaborate devices for protecting them from injury, 
either by ships colliding with the gates or other accident 
that would open through communication between the 
high and low-level waters. The bursting of dams has been 
notorious as a cause of disaster throughout history, and 
to prevent such an international catastrophe as the wreck- 
age of the Canal there are five special devices. Firstly, the 
centre wall of the locks is produced 1,000 feet beyond the 
lock gates on either side, and all ships will be compelled 
to stop at this wall and moor before entering the locks. 
Secondly, vessels are to be towed into the locks by electric 
locomotives instead of proceeding in under their own 
steam. Thirdly, outside the lock gates a great chain is 
stretched that hes ordinarily at the lock bottom. If there 
is reason to fear a collision between the lock gates and a 
vessel, the chain can be raised by hydrauhc cylinders in 
the walls, so as to stretch across the lock entrance on a 
level with the coping, and it is calculated that by this 
means an almost unthinkable force could be absorbed, so 
that a 10,000-ton vessel moving at 4 miles an hour would 
be brought to a stop in 70 feet. Fourthly, each lock is 
provided with double gates, so that if one pair is injured 
the other will be able to keep back the head of water ; and, 



The Panama Canal 25 

lastly, a special form of bridge has been designed as a 
further line of defence to act as a temporary dam. The 
heart of the locks lies in the central mass that divides each 
of the twin pairs. About 8i feet high and 60 feet thick, 
it is built solid for a little more than half its height, 
when the base divides into two retaining walls. These are 
partly filled in with earth, but also contain the tunnel, in 
which the lock works are safely concealed. This tunnel is 
divided into three parts, the lower portion of it being used 
for drainage, the centre for the electric cables for supplying 
light and power to work the gates and valves, and the top 
portion as a passage to enable men to reach and work the 
machinery. 

The Difficulties of Organisation 

The work of excavation, the great dams and the locks 
are the chief engineering features of the Canal, and the 
utmost credit is due to the United States for the way in 
which their organisation has triumphed over difficulties. 
When the French attempted the building of the Canal, 
among their greatest difficulties was disease, that too often 
resulted in death. Malaria and yellow fever claimed their 
victims by the hundred, and it is to the enhghtened methods 
and self-sacrificing devotion of the pioneers in modern 
medicine that the success of the engineers is in no small 
measure due. Once it was learnt that the mosquito was 
the carrier of malaria and yellow fever, swamps were 
drained, precautions were taken, and disease vanished. 

Apart from the question of health, the problem has 
demanded first-rate genius for organisation, a genius that 
the engineer is always forced to have at his command, but 



26 All About Engineering 

which has assumed in this great undertaking unparalleled 
dimensions. There has been a standing labour force of 
35,000 men, which, with their dependants, amounts to a 
population of 65,000. The material and supply branch has 
had eight huge general stores. Hotels and restaurants have 
been run up in the supply zone, and every day a special train 
of twenty-one cars has worked across the lines with perish- 
able foods. The whole settlement has been organised and 
managed automatically, and even paternally, by the Canal 
authorities, and as a result of their wise governance efficiency 
has resulted. In a paper that Colonel George W. Goethals, 
the chairman and chief engineer of the Isthmus Canal Com- 
mission, read to the British Association when it visited 
Winnipeg in 1909, he summarised the work, with the modesty 
characteristic of a great man, in the following words : 

" No new engineering problems have arisen, and none 
are likely to come up. The difficulties are due entirely to 
the magnitude of the work, complicated by conditions 
resulting from delays in securing suppUes, the effects of 
the climate, and the contentment of employees, rarely 
encountered elsewhere, but which have a material bearing 
on the issue. Results are obtained not alone because of 
the machines in use, but by the organisation, which is 
formed of upwards of 30,000 men of all walks of Ufe, and 
of practically every nationality. Authority is centralised, 
but responsibilities are distributed from the various heads 
of departments on down to the lowest in the ranks. Each 
man has a task to perform, each knows the results desired ; 
it is his duty to secure them, the necessary discretion being 
allowed to secure brain effort as well as brawn. Competition 
spurs men on to effort, and in carrying on the work this 



The Panama Canal 27 

factor is not forgotten. As a consequence, the organisation 
is itself a huge machine, which, in an enervating chmate, 
and notwithstanding the human element, has made not 
only the steam-shovel produce results never before antici- 
pated, but can carry to successful completion, if provided 
with the necessary means and protected against disease, 
the greatest work that has ever been attempted." 

The Canal, as I WTite, is now nearing completion, but 
before we leave it, let us take a glance at one of those 
unimportant aspects of the work that help our imagination 
to grasp the greatness of the enterprise. The Canal Record, 
shortly after the waters had been let into the excavations, 
drew attention to a curious phenomenon frequently seen on 
the Panama Canal. At times, the Gatun Lake has not a 
speck of any kind on its surface, except for an occasional 
white-capped wavelet ; an hour later, the surface is seen 
to be dotted with small green islets. These small " floating 
islands," as they are called, are masses of vegetation and 
earth loosened from the bottom of the Gatun Lake ; they 
have been found on examination to consist mainly of sticks 
and leaves held together by clay, with grass and other 
vegetation growing upon them. Though they have been 
found as large as three acres in extent on Lake Gatun, they 
are no obstacle to a steamer, though they would impede 
a launch, and they are firm enough for a man to walk upon 
them safely. The sudden appearance of the islets is caused 
by the change of wind ; they have previously been driven 
against the trees on the south side of the anchorage basin 
at Gatun by the wind blo\\ing up the Chagres valley, as 
it commonly does ; then, if there is a lull in the breeze 
or a change of direction, the islets drift out into the lake. 



28 



All About Engineering 



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CHAPTER III 

HARNESSING THE NILE — THE GREAT DAMS AT ASSOUAN AND 
ELSEWHERE, AND WHAT THEY HAVE MEANT TO EGYPT 

Fire, the old proverb says, is the best servant a man can 
have, but it is the worst master. Had the wise men of old 
had the knowledge that we have to-day of mechanical 
achievement, I think that for fire they would have sub- 
stituted water. Terror rides athwart the eddying smoke 
of a prairie fire ; it is in all its awesome majesty when the 
houses of a city burn and the red flames destroy the life 
of a people ; but is the horror of triumphing fire equal to 
the horror of triumphing water, and can the services that 
fire renders stand comparison by those of water ? Man's 
mastery over water is one of his oldest arts, but it is only 
to-day that he is realising what water will do for him if 
he asks it. The old world knew the use of irrigation ; agri- 
culture, in fact, started on an irrigation basis, and the 
literature of the East is full of references to the beauties 
of well-watered gardens, and to the blessing of water to a 
dry and thirsty land. It knew, too, that the natural falls 
could be pressed into service to drive water wheels, and so 
to grind com for man, and to assist him at the birth of 
manufacture. It had learnt that water was the great carrier, 
whether the waters of the ocean, the waters of the rivers, 
the waters of the tidal estuaries, where the river ebbs and 

flows with the pulsing of the sea, and the waters, too, of 

29 



30 All About Engineering 

the canals. But the engineer to-day reahses that it is only 
now, after centuries of effort, that we are inviting these 
agencies to exert for us a tithe of their full powers. We 
are harnessing the great falls and using them to generate 
electricity that is to Ught our cities and to turn for us the 
wheels of our factories in far remote places ; we are using 
the force of falling water to fertilise our lands, and give 
to the fields the nitrates that enrich the crops ; in all parts 
of the earth we are carrying out irrigation works with 
mighty barrages that are bringing into cultivation great 
areas of land that till now have been arid wastes, and that 
are saving our herds of cattle and sheep from the dread 
terror of drought. And, as yet, the work is only at its 
beginning. That you may realise what we are doing, I am 
asking you to think of the following true story, as analogous 
with the uses we are now making of water as compared 
with the uses that were made of it by the ancients. I 
am indebted to the kindness of the editor of Technical 
World Magazine, where it first appeared, for permission 
to reproduce its substance. 

Recently, an American mining engineer was looking 
over some abandoned gold smelters at Mazapil, an old 
Mexican town buried in the mountains. When he returned 
to civilisation, he carried with him several bricks from the 
buildings of Mazapil, and some samples of slag which he 
turned over to the Company assayer. The mining engineer 
had suspected that, with the crude mining operations in 
vogue at the time of the former operations, there would 
have been some loss in extracting the gold from the ore, 
but he was hardly prepared for the assayer's report, stating 
that the bricks and slag ran nearly $500 to the ton, gold, 



Harnessing the Nile 31 

silver and copper. Further investigation has shown that 
the streets of Mazapil are hterally paved with gold and 
silver, to say nothing of the high percentage of the baser 
metals — copper, lead and zinc. The Company sent its 
representatives, and is now in possession of all the old 
smelters and their huge slag piles, the garden and its wall, 
and nearly all the old buildings and pavements in the town 
— even including the post office ! 

The story of the town paved with gold makes a strong 
appeal to the imagination, but it is in essence nothing 
beside the vast irrigation and power works that the engineer 
of to-day is undertaking. Many great construction works 
might be chosen to illustrate the truth of this as regards 
irrigation. I shall content myself with a brief consideration 
of one, the harnessing of the river Nile, and, above all, the 
construction of the great Assouan barrage. I shall then 
refer to a few of the other irrigation schemes in the rest of 
the world. 

Egypt is, and from the beginning of recorded history 
has been, the world's wonderland, and rightly the Nile 
has been spoken of as the Father of Egypt. To think pro- 
perly of Egypt, you must imagine a rainless country depen- 
dent for its existence on the supplies of water that come 
down to it from the heart of Africa through the river Nile. 
One of the earliest Bible stories, the story of Joseph and 
the famine in Egypt, tells that in those distant years the 
Egyptians were faced with just the same problem that 
faced Napoleon when he took over the country, and that 
faced our Empire-builders when we were called upon to 
assume the responsibilities of occupation. 

The source of the Nile stretches away to the southward. 



32 All About Engineering 

far beyond the land of Egypt, and it falls down great 
cataracts on its way to the sea. The last of these mighty 
falls — known from the point of view of the river's mouth — 
is the " First Cataract " at Assouan, and is the site of the 
great barrage that has fired the imagination of the world, 
and has been constructed to keep back the waters in the 
times of flood, and to release them as they are required to 
fertilise the land. 

Let us imagine ourselves passing up the Nile from sea- 
wards, and paying no attention to any but the larger 
barrages. We should travel up one of the two great branches 
by which the waters of the Nile reach to the Mediterranean. 
Between them lies the delta of the Nile, so called because 
of the resemblance of its shape to the Greek capital D (A), 
and as we began to get near Cairo, the site of the Pyramids 
and the region whence these two branches diverge, we 
should find ourselves having to pass through the locks of 
a large barrage that stretches across both branches of the 
stream. Next time you hear people tell of the vandalism 
of thj engineer, speak to them of the history of this barrage. 
The idea of it originated in the mind of the great Napoleon, 
who saw that it was necessary to hold up the height of the 
river Nile, if the delta lying below was to be properly 
supplied with water. Mehemet Ali, the founder of the 
present Egyptian dynasty, after Napoleon's short occupa- 
tion, set to work to carry out the scheme. He was a 
ruthless but far-seeing tyrant, and had already built 
the great Mahmoudieh Canal in a single year, forcing 
250,000 labourers to leave their homes and excavate the 
canal without tools, using their bare hands to fill the 
baskets in which the excavated earth was carried 



Harnessing the Nile 33 

away. Twenty-five thousand of the labourers died at the 
task. 

In describing the origin of the barrage, Mr.- John Ward, 
in his vivid sketch of Egypt, under the title " Pyramids 
and Progress," speaks thus of the origin of the work : 
" Various French engineers were summoned to carry this 
out. One ventured to suggest a great stone embankment. 
' Well, then,' said Mehemet Ali, ' you have those great 
useless heaps of stones, the Pyramids : use them up, every 
block, for the purpose.' The engineer knew that infamy 
would attach to his name if he agreed to this proposition, 
and asked some days to make calculations. His master 
would only allow him one day. When the engineer again 
appeared, he said the cost of transporting the stone from 
the Pyramids would be greater than to quarry it anew in 
the mountains. ' Then let the Pyramids stay, and quarry 
new stone,' said the tyrant, and so the monuments were 
saved." 

The barrage was begun in 1837. I^ nothing more than 
in engineering is cheap work bad work. Forced to rely on 
unskilled labourers, obliged to hurry on the construction, the 
French engineer laid the foundations for his masonry on 
rubble and cement tumbled into the river, and it was not 
until 1861 that the barrage was completed. Wlien, two 
years later, the attempt was made to hold up the stream 
with it, the barrage cracked, and began to move off bodily 
towards the Mediterranean ! 

To the great British engineers, trained in irrigation 
work in India, belongs the credit of having saved the bar- 
rage and rendered it efficient, and also to Lord Cromer, 
who had the strength of purpose to trust fully and to 



34 AH About Engineering 

support enthusiastically those in whom he had confidence. 
There was talk of blowing up the useless barrage, but Sir 
Colin Moncrieff and Sir William Willcocks undertook to 
save it at a cost of £500,000, the price that it would have 
cost to destroy. The work was one of extreme difficulty. 
When the Nile was low, sections of the bottom had to be 
isolated off by banking back the stream ; that portion of 
the bottom had to be pumped dry, the bad parts of the 
embankment had to be strengthened and protected by 
plastering them with cement, and the weakened piers had 
to be underpinned. Men worked at the job night and day, 
the light to carry on the task at night being derived either 
from the moon, or when that failed, by electric light laid 
on to the bed of the stream. Mr. Ward, who saw the work 
when completed, and also the new work done later, when 
a further addition was made, describes it as a " beautiful 
light structure, with its slim towers and embattled gates, 
spanning the mighty Nile. There is no great engineering 
work at once so dignified, so useful, and so picturesque." 
As he points out, the restoration of the barrage, by raising 
the Nile level, doubled the agricultural produce of the 
Delta. 

Much might be written of the Delta barrage, but let it 
suffice here to say that the capacity of the barrage to hold 
back the Nile was enormously increased by placing great 
weirs below it, so as to some extent to relieve the pressure, 
the water between the weir and the barrage obviously press- 
ing against the north side of the barrage and resisting the 
force of the water above. By these means the barrage is 
now able to hold up 7 feet more water than was originally 
intended. 



Harnessing the Nile 35 

Here are some figures showing the effect of the work 
as illustrated by the number of acres of land in the Delta 
under cultivation : — 

Acres 
Before British occupation . . . . . . . . 600,000 

Before the repair of the dam. the water being 

held up 6^ feet . . . . . . . . 1,200,000 

Dam repaired, 1890 . . . . . . . . 1,520,000 

Dam improved by weirs, etc., i8g8 . . . . 1,700,000 

Before passing on to the Assouan barrage, we will take 
this opportunity of considering the bare elements of irri- 
gation. Water, we all know, finds the lowest level, and it 
is in obedience to the force of gravity that it runs down- 
wards to the sea. It is clear, then, that in any district 
the river-bed will be the lowest part, the bed itself getting 
lower and lower as it nears the common level of the ocean. 
But the bed of a river often runs in shelves, a waterfall 
occurring at the edge of each shelf. This is usually due to 
the fact that the ground is of different kinds, some parts 
being harder, and some softer. The softer part gets eaten 
away, but the harder part resists the wearing action of the 
stream, and so a ledge is formed. There are two ways, then, 
by which irrigation can be carried out. Either the water 
can be raised by the labour of bullocks or of men above 
the general level, and then distributed, or it may be led 
from one of these ledges and passed to the lands at the 
lower level. 

Let me describe what happens in an ordinary Indian 
garden, and you will see in miniature the method that has 
been used to save Egypt from bankruptcy, by increasing 
her sources of wealth. 



36 All About Engineering 

A sloping mound leads to the well's mouth, and a large 
leather bucket tied to a rope runs over a pulley. Let us 
start with the bucket in the water. A couple of bullocks 
are harnessed to the rope and walk down the slope, dragging 
the bucket up from the well, being helped in their hard 
work by the fact that they are going down hill. The bucket 
comes to the surface and unloads itself in a tank, and as 
the bullocks return, the rope slackens again, and the bucket 
drops back to the well. From the well pipes or clay channels 
run to various parts of the garden. The water passes from 
the higher level of the tank to the plot that is to be watered, 
and the bare-footed gardener dams the main channel with 
a little piece of clay, breaks down the clay embankment 
that is at the side of the plot, and the water flows over it. 
When enough water has entered, he removes his first tiny 
dam, repairs the second, and the water passes on to irrigate 
another plot. 

In Egypt the same process is adopted to some extent, 
but large canals and dykes take the place of the channels 
described. Sluice gates are substituted for the gardener's 
lumps of clay, and the barrages do much of the work of 
bullocks in the Indian garden. The construction of the 
great canals necessary in connection with the barrages, 
canals many of which carry a greater volume of water 
than our river Thames, has itself been a work of first-rate 
engineering importance. 

From Cairo and the Delta barrage let us make our way 
up stream. We wiU pass the barrages at Assiout and Esneh 
and come straight to consider the Assouan dam. It lies | 
753 miles from the sea, at a spot that is full of the romance 
of history. Just above it, now submerged beneath the 



Harnessing the Nile 37 

waters, is the island of Philae, with its beautiful statues 
and temples, once girt about with graceful palms, which, 
alas ! have succumbed before the advances of civilisation. 
The Egyptian Government, while doing all in their power 
to preserve the remains on Philae, have made ample amends 
for the damage inevitable through immersion, by under- 
pinning and strengthening the temples, and by thoroughly 
repairing several structures of great archaeological interest 
in the neighbourhood. While we are standing under the 
heat of the Egyptian sun in the clear air of Egypt, looking 
at the great piles of masonry that constitute the dam, 
let us consider the task that the engineers had before them 
when they undertook to place their granite shackles on 
the river. The climate was one of the first difficulties. The 
heat of the noonday sun is such that after it has been 
shining on iron or stone, the material reaches a temperature 
at which it would scorch the skin or cook a lump of dough 
that was placed upon it. The dam had to be built i^ miles 
long, and it had to be constructed solid enough to keep 
back the vast pressure that the Nile can exert when in full 
flood. This is so enormous that now that the dam has been 
completed there is a force of over 300 tons pressing against 
the sluice gates. The effect of the dam is to create a mighty 
lake where before was a raging boiHng torrent, a lake 
several times the size of Loch Lomond. 

It is difficult to convey in writing the magnitude of the 
difficulties that faced the engineers. But try to picture to 
yourself i^ miles of raging floods that have come down 
from the melting snows of Abyssinia, tearing their way 
through the rocky gorges that form the mythical tomb 
of Osiris, hurling themselves seawards with a force that 



38 All About Engineering 

would sweep downwards in their bed 4-ton masses of granite. 
The problem for the engineers was to build solidly beneath 
the torrent foundations that would stand the strain of 
keeping in check one of the mightiest rivers in the world. 
In giving our meed of praise to Sir William Will cocks, Lord 
Cromer, Sir Benjamin Baker, Messrs. John Aird and Co., 
and the great men associated with the work, the name 
of Sir Ernest Cassel deserves honourable mention. It is 
the habit of some people to sneer at financiers, and to regard 
them as parasites on the world's industry, but it was Sir 
Ernest Cassel who came to the rescue of the Egyptian 
Government when it was in financial difficulties, through the 
Soudan War, and advanced the money that made possible 
the undertaking of the project. The prosperity of Egypt 
has been the result. 

The Assouan dam is a type of work that is new in history, 
and in his account of " The Nile Reservoir Dam at Assouan," 
Sir Wilham Willcocks suggests that it may prove to be the 
pioneer work for other similar undertakings all over the 
world. The point to remember is that the lands of Egypt 
are fertilised by the Nile floods. The waters pour down 
laden with silt, and the dam has to allow this rich mud 
to pass through the sluices in the time of flood, and then, 
as the flood begins to slack, to hold up the water for use 
in the season of drought. 

Building began in 1898, and an army of workmen, 
engineers, mechanics, labourers and beasts of burden and 
all kinds of machinery were drawn as by a magnet to the 
neighbourhood of Philse. Before them stretched the Nile, 
and it was their work to build up on the bed of the waters 
a solid foundation. Divers are men of marvellous skiU, 



Harnessing the Nile 39 

courage and resource, but with a steadily flowing current, 
the task would have been one far beyond their strength. 
"When the line across which the dam was to run had been 
determined on, the first problem was to get the bed of the 
river dry, to narrow the passage of the river, in fact, and 
deal with the bed section by section. There was granite 
in plenty at hand, for was not Syene, the old name for 
Assouan, the granite quarry of the Egyptian kings ? Great 
boulders were hewn out of the rock, brought to a part of 
one of the channels just below the line of the proposed 
dam, and dropped in. Though they weighed tons, they 
were swept away by the current. The engineers were un- 
daunted. Large masses of granite were collected, tied 
together by iron cables, and lowered into the Nile. At times 
the engineers were in despair of success by other means, 
and whole railway trucks, securely tied and laden with 
granite, were dropped into the gulf, and, at last, an effective 
barrier was made. Similar work was then started in the 
still waters above the site of the dam, and with the flow 
of the water checked, it became an easy matter to build 
a sort of graving dock, to make it watertight, to set the 
big centrifugal pumps at work, and to lay bare the founda- 
tions dry. 

This was the most anxious moment for the engineers. 
The fixing of the first dam, done, as you will remember, 
so as to get quiet water to sink the second dam above 
the proposed foundation, had caused the waters to rise 
10 feet. The completion of the upper dam lifted it 20 feet. 
When the barrage was projected, it was thought that the 
floor of the stream as it passed between the granite hills 
on either side was solid rock, but the engineers found, to 



40 All About Engineering 

their dismay, that large areas of the bed were rotten, and 
it was by no means certain that with the pressure of water 
above the dams, the stream would not pour up through 
the fissured rock in overwhelming quantities. Events 
happily proved these fears to be groundless, and the 
engineers soon found that it was an easy matter for them 
to keep the bed on which they wished to lay the founda- 
tions of the dam perfectly dry. 

I have just mentioned the difficulty that the floor of 
the Nile at Assouan was not, as had been supposed, solid 
rock. This was the one really untoward circumstance in 
the whole building of the dam, and as the appearance of 
such unexpected troubles is one of the greatest trials that 
engineers have to face, I shall put down exactly what Sir 
Benjamin Baker said about it when he described the great 
works to the Royal Institution shortly after their com- 
pletion. " When the rotten rock in the bed," he said, 
" was first discovered, I told Lord Cromer frankly that 
I could not say what the extra cost or time involved by 
this and other unforeseen conditions would be, and that 
all I could say was that, however bad the conditions, the 
job could be done. He replied that he must be satisfied 
with this assurance, and say that the dam had to be com- 
pleted whatever the time and cost. With a strong man 
at the head of affairs, both engineers and contractors — ^who 
often are suffering more anxiety than they care to show — 
are encouraged, and works, however difficult, have a habit 
of getting completed, and sometimes, as in the present case, 
in less than the original contract time." 

The French engineers at the Delta barrage, you will 
remember, had to construct their foundations by the un- 



Harnessing the Nile 41 

satisfactory method of dropping large quantities of stone 
into the river-bed. The foundations of the giant barrage 
at Assouan — and the Assouan dam, remember, is still the 
largest in the world — were built on the dry land with the 
great centrifugal pumps ready at hand to dry out any 
inrush of water. The dry land laid bare had to be pre- 
pared to receive the superstructure the engineers proposed 
to build upon it. 

If you like to consider it so, their work was dentistry 
on a grandiose scale, and many a rotten tooth had to be 
excavated before the process of filling in could start. The 
base of the foundations was almost loo feet across, and 
the crumbling rocks made it necessary at times to excavate 
40 feet deeper down than was specified in the contract, 
and it caused the double difficulty of the rock taking 
longer to excavate, and of a correspondingly greater quan- 
tity of masonry having to be built in. That the 40 feet 
extra was a serious item with the Nile flood ever threaten- 
ing to rush in and spoil the half-completed work, can be 
realised from two statements : (i) That the greatest height 
from the foundation of the dam was 130 feet ; and (2) 
that five times the estimated amount of excavation work 
had to be undertaken. There is nothing very peculiar 
about the structure of the dam itself, for the main prin- 
ciples of dam construction have long been known. With 
the foundations firmly excavated huge shells of local granite 
were built, and these were set in that wonderful material 
British Portland cement, a substance that grows more 
and more solid the longer it is subjected to the action of 
water. The space in between the vast walls was filled with 
rubble and rough stone all carefully laid by hand, and the 



42 All About Engineering 

whole was made solid by what is known as cement mortar, 
the substance consisting of four parts of sand to one of 
cement. The face work of the dam was of rough ashlar, 
except the sluice linings, which were finely dressed. As 
often in big engineering exploits, the difficulty of the work 
lay in the fact that the whole was a race against time. 
If the works did not reach a certain stage by the time that 
the Nile rose in flood they would have been overwhelmed 
and destroyed. The co-ordination of skilled and unskilled 
work necessary staggers the imagination. There were the 
native labourers working under their local foreman, the 
Italian quarrymen hewing and chipping granite, the crane 
men carrying hither and thither their burdens of stone, or 
pulling away the rotten rock, the blasters loading their 
charges of explosives, the railway workers laying light 
lines as they were needed, and organising their makeshift 
traffic, the smiths hard at it with their ironwork, the 
masons laying the granite blocks as they were brought 
to them by the giant cranes, the cement and mortar mixers 
with their special machinery, the pump men ready to deal 
at a moment's notice with an inrush of water, the doctors 
called on to maintain the health of the great settlement 
whose inhabitants were ignorant of the first principles of sani- 
tation, the store-keepers and those responsible to see to it 
that the life in the settlement proceeded smoothly, and 
dozens of other classes of men, all co-operating for the 
single object. East and West jostled in amazing contrast — 
steam-navvies with donkeys and camels, workmen using 
the newest methods of the engineer, and workmen toihng 
as they did in the days of the Pharaohs ; the whole super- 
vised by a band of English engineers. We can be proud 



Harnessing the Nile 43 

of the achievement by which this city of Babel was organised 
to work together for their single aim, and to complete in 
four years a task that the contract laid down was to be 
done in five. 

I have said nothing so far about Sir WiUiam Willcocks' 
design, but you will perhaps have heard of the opposition 
made to the project by certain archceologists on account 
of the submerging of Philae. The dam was originally designed 
to be 100 feet high, but as a concession to popular clamour, 
the height was cut down by 26 feet, so as to prevent the 
complete immersion of Philee. Fortunately, the International 
Committee that considered the plans made such stringent 
conditions as to the strength of the work, that the barrage, 
when completed in 1902, while nominally strong enough 
to hold back 35 miUiards of cubic feet of water, was really 
strong enough to support the pressure from double the 
amount. Dramatic success followed the earlier under- 
taking, and it was in a very short time decided that Philae 
must be sacrificed, and the height of the dam raised. The 
new scheme was completed and formally opened in De- 
cember, 1 91 2. 

The raising of the barrage was a less difficult problem 
than the original construction. But a difficulty always 
present in the minds of the engineers, though seldom thought 
of by the man in the street, had to be surmounted. It is a 
general law of physics that substances expand when heated, 
and contract when cooled. For this reason, a gap is always 
left between the ends of railway lines, for otherwise, on a 
warm day, the rails would expand and buckle into curves. 
In large bridges, too, arrangements have to be made to 
allow the whole structure to move as a result of this 



44 All About Engineering 

expansion. At Assouan, it was clear that trouble might arise 
if the new masonry was firmly bound to the old without 
sufficient time being allowed for the new and the old to 
harmonise in their movements, and so a peculiar method 
was adopted for the thickening of the dam. The face of 
the old wall had a number of steel rods built into it, and 
the new portion thickening it was built between 2 inches 
and 6 inches away from the old, deriving its support from 
these rods. Obviously, this space had eventually to be 
filled up, and cement was employed for the purpose. The 
cement was delivered into the space by flexible piping after 
two years had been allowed to ensure that the temperature 
had settled down. When the thickening had been satis- 
factorily completed, it was an easy matter to raise the 
height of the dam by building on the top of the 
structure. 

So far I have said nothing about the locks that are 
required for these barrages. The Nile is a navigable river, 
and provision has to be made for passing boats between 
the upper and lower streams. At Assouan, the difference 
of level is 105 feet and the ships negotiate this by means 
of a flight of four locks. When you learn that the largest 
of the lock gates are as much as 78 feet 9 inches high, you 
will realise the magnitude of the task involved when the 
decision was made to increase the height of the barrage. 
An ingenious system was adopted to meet the difficulty. 
An entirely new pair of lock gates M^as fitted for the first 
of the locks and each of the old gates was lifted from its 
bed and taken to the recess below it. You have only to 
think a moment to realise that the shifting of the gates 
involved taking them over the lock sills. This was effected 



Harnessing the Nile 45 

by laying rails on the floor of the empty lock and con- 
tinuing them from lock to lock, keeping the level constant 
by a mass of piled sleepers. WTien the gate had successfully 
reached the position required the sleepers were gradually 
removed, and the gates placed in position. If you just 
consider what an unwieldy shaped thing a lock-gate is, 
and then remember that the heaviest of the gates thus to 
be moved weighed 92 tons, you can imagine the difficulty 
of the work. 

The Assouan dam is now complete, and when it was 
opened on December 23, 1912, the Khedive of Egypt paid 
graceful homage to the old religion of the country. The 
ancient Egyptians believed that the river was presided over 
by the Nile god Hapi, whose praises are sung in the lengthy 
hymn found in the Egyptian collection of the British 
Museum ; the handle that he used to manipulate the lever 
for opening the swing-bridge across the locks very appro- 
priately took the form of a silver statuette of Hapi. 

WTiat other works on the Nile will future generations, or, 
indeed, our own generation, see inaugurated ? Sir William 
Willcocks is one of those who can dream visions, and, what 
is more, can see effect given to his visions. He has already 
given a forecast of the vast possibilities of irrigation that 
still lie before Egypt. It may be that the engineers will 
place shackles on the great lakes, that they will get rid of 
the swamps that squander the life-giving stream, and that 
the Assouan barrage is only an early stage in the progress 
of the history of the irrigation of Egypt. Work such as 
this must continually go forward. We may be proud of 
the prosperity that we have brought to a people over- 
burdened with debt, but the source of our pride must spur 



46 All About Engineering 

us on to further efforts until we have brought the greatest 
possible area of the desert into successful cultivation. 

A final word as to cost and figures. The cost of the 
original Assouan dam was £2,450,000. The amount of 
material excavated for it was 824,000 cubic yards, and 
the masonry built 704,000 cubic yards. The dam con- 
tained 180 sluice gates, giving a total free area of 24,000 
square feet. The volume of water held back was about 
35,300,000,000 cubic feet (over 1,300,000,000 cubic yards). 
The heightening of the dam has cost about ;£i, 500,000, but 
as a result of the work, the volume of the water held back 
has been more than doubled, amounting to 81,190,000,000 
cubic feet. 

To give some idea of the meaning of these figures, I will 
quote again from Sir Benjamin Baker, who explained the 
old capacity of the dam as being roughly equivalent to the 
annual rainfall on London and its suburbs within a radius 
of 13 miles ; or twice the volume of the colossal scheme 
projected for utilising all the available Welsh valleys as a 
water supply for London ; or more than enough water for 
a full domestic supply to every city, town and village in 
the United Kingdom. If you regard the question from the 
point of view of the flow obtained, you got, with the old 
reservoir, a volume of water steadily passing from the 
reservoir equivalent to twice that of the Thames in flood. 
And since the date of Sir Benjamin Baker's address, these 
amounts have to be more than doubled. There is reason, 
I think, you will agree, for Englishmen to be proud of 
the achievement of the engineers in Egypt. 



CHAPTER IV 

IRRIGATION IN MESOPOTAMIA — WATERING THE GOLDFIELDS 
AT KALGOORLIE — GREAT SCHEMES IN CANADA — HOW 
WATER IS BROUGHT TO THE WORLD'S CITIES 

Some four years ago, as the Geographical Journal reminds 
us, Sir William Willcocks read a remarkable paper on a 
scheme for the irrigation of Mesopotamia, and when the 
lecture was over Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff, referring to 
Sir William Willcocks* life, described it as having been 
a very eventful one. " He was," Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff 
said, " a very little boy one day in the hot month of May, 
1857, when a despatch came to his father from Delhi, 
only 20 miles off, to say India was ablaze, and the Mutiny 
upon us. It was only through extraordinary risks and 
great danger that he and his party — the father a very gallant 
soldier, the gentle wife and five little boys — managed to 
escape. It was too much for the mother, but the boys, I 
am glad to say, are all men now, and have all faithfully 
served their country. When I went to Egypt, in 1883, 
Sir William Willcocks was one of the first Indian engineers 
to join me. He had served under me in India for some 
years before. I think I may claim him as a pupil of my 
own, and, as very often happens, the pupil soon surpassed 
his master. His life in Egypt was full of event. For instance, 
walking after dark, about midnight, from the railway 
station to his boat on the Nile, he tumbled into an open 

47 



48 All About Engineering 

grave, and when he stumbled out the watchman went at 
him with a stick, mistaking him for a demon. A remark- 
able chapter of his life was on one occasion when the Nile 
flood did not rise quite to the proper height, and a large 
tract of country in Upper Egypt was left without water 
flowing over it. There was a canal about 200 feet wide 
and 20 feet deep, which, if the water could only be held 
up in it for a few feet and diverted over the land, would 
do all that was wanted. Willcocks stuck his bed on the 
bank of the canal, got together the peasants of the whole 
province, and for three days and nights worked at it till 
the water rose and flooded the plain. The people were 
so delighted with what he had done that they went to 
their mosque and insisted that this Christian should 
go with them and thank God. This is a very unique 
experience. You can understand from these little traits what 
Sir William has been doing. He is not the conventional 
type of man." 

In the last chapter, we read of one of the great successes 
with which the name of Sir William Willcocks will always 
be associated, the harnessing of the river Nile. I want 
now to write shortly of the great project that he has designed 
in Mesopotamia, and that is awaiting the long-deferred 
co-operation of the Turkish Government to be carried into 
effect. Sir William Willcocks some years ago, at their 
request, studied the position of Mesopotamia, and suggested 
a scheme whereby the country could be efficiently irrigated. 
He started, plans and levels in hand, from the spot where 
Jewish tradition placed the Garden of Eden, to follow out 
the traces of the four rivers described in the early chapters 
of Genesis. As he proceeded on his journey, he was able 



Great Water Schemes 49 

to read in the country he passed through the details of the 
Bible history. From the disposition of the country, he 
could see how, so long as the development of the country 
was confined to the low-lying lands blessed with water 
clear of silt, everything in the delta of the Tigris and 
Euphrates went on smoothly enough. But the pressure of 
population made the work of development advance into 
the parts where there was no clear water, and then the 
difficulties began. In the language of Genesis, the world 
became full of violence. And so the peoples began to spread 
up the rivers, and they found themselves forced to protect 

themselves from floods by the only means they knew of 

the shutting off of the waters of certain of the branches 
by earthen dams. You have all read in your childhood of 
the Flood and of how Noah devised the Ark as a means 
of escape. This is what Sir Wilham Willcocks writes of it : 
"The struggles between the different communities, and 
the terrible consequences which might result, intimidated 
the more thoughtful members of the community, of whom 
Noah was one, and he prepared for the worst. He built an 
Ark of the poplar wood so common in the Euphrates 
valley, and pitched it inside and out with bitumen from 
Hit, just as the boats and coracles on the Euphrates are 
pitched to-day. A settler, probably in the lower part of 
the delta, south of Kerbela, where the deserts, moreover, 
are strangely degraded and low, he felt the full force of 
the inundation. A massive earthern dyke was thrown 
across the head of the Sakhlawia, the flood discharge of 
the Euphrates was doubled, and instead of the waters 
rising i6 feet, as in an ordinary inundation, they rose 
15 cubits, or 24 feet, and not only was the cultivated land 



50 All About Engineering 

under water, but the deserts themselves were submerged." 
The story, with all its dramatic intensity, conveys the 
moral of the danger of interfering, without full knowledge, 
with the great natural forces of the world ; and to the modern 
engineer the lesson to be learnt from the story of the Flood 
is that the floods of the Euphrates will have to be con- 
trolled when any serious development of the country is 
undertaken. 

The history of Mesopotamia is the history of canals and 
waterways, of great floods rendering man's early efforts 
futile, of wars resulting in the neglect of the great water- 
ways, and of great tracts of the country lapsing back into 
its primitive barren desert. 

What are, in broad Unes, the proposals that Sir WiUiam 
Willcocks has submitted to the Turkish Government ? 
His first anxiety is to rid the Euphrates from the danger 
of floods. This he has proposed to do by cutting an escape 
for the flood waters of the Euphrates, and discharging 
them down the depression of the ancient Pison, the first 
of the four rivers of Genesis. The cost of this great cut, 
and of the works necessary to control it, would be £350,000, 
and he has estimated that on their completion the culti- 
vated area will be doubled, and the yield of wheat trebled 
along the Euphrates. 

It is proposed, again, to run a huge central canal through 
the delta between the Tigris and the Euphrates, to irrigate 
3,000,000 acres of the best land of Mesopotamia. It will 
give you some idea of the great volumes of water to be 
dealt with when I tell you that to the north-west of Bagdad, 
between the Tigris and the Euphrates, is a great depression, 
known as the Akkar Kuf Lake. In periods of low water 



Great Water Schemes 51 

this lake has an area of 40 square miles. In times of flood 
it extends over 300 square miles, an expanse about twice 
that of the Isle of Wight. The level of this lake is 35 feet 
below that of the Euphrates, and 10 feet below that of 
the Tigris. The lake is already fed from the Euphrates by 
the Sakhlawia, the ancient Hiddekel of Genesis, and it is 
proposed that it should be utilised to act as the source of 
the central canal. For this, both the Euphrates and the 
Tigris require to be controlled. The problem for the Euph- 
rates is — on paper — the easiest thing in the world. Regulat- 
ing works would be placed on the Sakhlav\da to check the 
flow into the lake, and on the Euphrates itself down stream 
of the Sakhlawia would be placed a barrage with sluices 
to hold back the main river and ensure a constant supply. 

The proposals as regards the Tigris are a little more 
complex. Far north of Bagdad at Beled, where the river 
is 60 feet higher than the lake, a weir would be constructed, 
and from upstream of this weir a canal would be drawn 
to irrigate the rich lands north of Bagdad, the water having 
an escape into the lake, and the plan at once providing 
an adequate supply to the lake, and securing the means 
of keeping the canal free from silt. From the lake would 
run the great canal close to the right bank of the Tigris. 

The question of the Euphrates flooding, and of how 
that can be prevented, has already been considered, and 
the left bank of the canal would serve as a great dyke to 
check the Tigris from overflowing its banks into the central 
delta. On it, too, would run a railway that would provide 
the means of bringing the produce from the irrigated land 
to the markets where they are required. 

A beautiful feature of the scheme is the way in which 



52 AH About Engineering 

the lake would act as a filter. For reasons that I need 
not go into, the silt that is so desirable in Egypt is a source 
of danger to the cultivator in Mesopotamia, and as the 
silt-laden waters of the Euphrates and Tigris discharge 
themselves into the lake the silt will sink and be trapped, 
and pure water will flow into the lands to the south of it. 

The project, which is grand in its simplicity and its 
comprehensiveness, would eventually irrigate 6,000,000 
acres, and if the Government would carry it through, would 
at once supply half of this area. In terms of its results, it 
would mean to the world 1,000,000 tons of wheat annually, 
2,000,000 cwts. of cotton, millions of sheep and hundreds 
of thousands of cattle. To give this produce an outlet 
to the markets of the world. Sir William Willcocks has 
completed his scheme by formulating the plans for a net- 
work of railways to run through, eventually, from Bagdad 
into the coastline of Palestine. 

Speaking with full confidence before the Royal Geo- 
graphical Society, in November, 1909, he summarised his 
plans in the following striking words : 

" I know that in these western countries of Europe, 
where rainfall is timely and abundant, and where rain and 
disaster cannot overtake a country in a day, we are apt to 
imagine that works of restoration must also take long 
years to bear any fruit. But in the arid regions of the 
earth it is not so. There the withdrawal of water turns a 
garden into a desert in a few weeks ; its restoration touches 
the country as with a magician's wand. In her long history 
of many thousands of years. Babylonia has again and 
again been submerged, but she has always risen with an 
energy and thoroughness, rivalling the very completeness 



Great Water Schemes 53 

and suddenness of her fall. She has never failed to respond 
to those who have striven to raise her. Again, it seems 
that the time has come for this land, long wasted with 
misery, to rise from the very dust and to take her place 
by the side of her ancient rival, the land of Egypt. The 
works we are proposing are drawn on sure and truthful 
lines, and the day they are carried out, the two great rivers 
will hasten to respond, and Babylonia will yet once again 
see her waste places becoming inhabited, and the desert 
blossoming like the rose." 

Sir William "Willcocks's dream has not come true as yet. 
The party of the Young Turks, who, we thought in Europe, 
were to regenerate Turkey, have failed to do the good 
work expected of them, and the irrigation of Mesopotamia 
remains a dream for the future to see realised. I have 
written at length about the triumphs of the engineer in 
Egypt, and have thought it only fair to give you the other 
side of the picture in Mesopotamia. The story is a striking 
object lesson of the need of a strong government. On 
this the work of the engineer, just as the whole progress of 
civihsation, depends — a thought that may help you to 
preserve a sane view of Ufe when you come to see the reck- 
less way in which sections of a people are from time to 
time attempting to scrap the great machine of government 
on which our whole prosperity depends. 

From Mesopotamia and its troubles, let us pass to 
Austraha. When Sir William Willcocks was writing about 
the Assouan dam and irrigation generally, he made the 
comment that Austraha would have benefited vastly had 
the Government of that country paid to irrigation a portion 
of the attention they have given to improving means of 



54 AH About Engineering 

communication. Only a few years have elapsed since his 
statement, but already the idea of irrigation has taken a 
firm hold, and the Australian agriculturist is realising the 
value of the system. It was a terrible lesson, indeed, that 
brought home the importance of the work, and the years 
of the Great Australian drought, when men and horses, 
cattle and sheep died for lack of water over great tracts 
of country, will long be remembered as one of the great 
catastrophes written red in the history of the world. 
Instead of writing generally of the great irrigation schemes 
that have been promoted and carried through by the 
Commonwealth and the States Governments, which you 
can read of in any up-to-date book on Australia, I will 
describe one that was of such a daring character, so novel 
in conception, and so conspicuously successful in its execu- 
tion that it can claim the right to a more than passing 
reference in these pages. What was the problem ? Gold 
had been discovered at Coolgardie, 363 miles from the 
port of Fremantle, on the west coast of Austraha. The 
first 100 miles from the coast run upwards over granite 
ranges, about 1,200 feet high, and then the country con- 
tinues to rise through a series of broken rolling plains. 
The district is almost waterless, very hot in summer, with 
a paltry rainfall of about 7 inches. Before the discovery 
of gold, in 1892, the inhospitable character of the country 
was such that a man who had traversed it got the name 
of being an intrepid explorer. With the discovery of gold, 
men made a rush to the fields, braving hardships and risking 
death. The Government did what it could ; it excavated 
tanks and built dams, but with all its resources utilised, 
it only succeeded in reducing the price of water from 2S. 6d. 



Great Water Schemes 55 

a gallon to 70s. for 1,000 gallons. Meanwhile the railway 
crept up to the fields, but owing to the difficulty of 
getting water, its cost to the railway was the amazing 
sum of ;£i,ooo a day during the summer months. An 
attempt was even made to secure water by boring, and 
the promoters of this scheme bored down 3,000 feet 
through the solid granite before abandoning their idea 
in despair. 

In 1895 Sir John Forrest visited the goldfields, and 
to the astonishment of Australia, he announced on his 
return that he proposed to have water pumped up to the 
goldfields. In the Overseas Dominions, when once they 
have decided on doing a thing, they waste no time in setting 
to work, and in 1896 Sir John Forrest brought in a Bill 
for the construction of a reservoir to dam up the Helena 
River, near Fremantle, and to pump water out at the rate 
of 5,600,000 gallons a day up to the miners at KalgoorHe 
and Coolgardie, at an estimated cost of £2,500,000. It is 
never necessary to do more than bring forward an original 
idea if you want opposition, and Sir John Forrest got it 
in plenty. He stuck to his guns, however, and by 
1898 had got the Bill hustled through the Legislative 
Assembly. 

The first thing to do was to secure the supply of water 
that had to be pumped. About 30 miles from Perth two 
great arms of granite jut out across the narrow valley at 
the bottom of which flows the Helena River. It was decided 
to dam back the stream with a great barrier of concrete. 
As the reservoir was to hold 4,600,000,000 gallons of water, 
there had to be no risk of weakness, and to ensure safety 
the engineers dug their foundations 100 feet in places below 



56 All About Engineering 

the level of the river. They built them of a width varying 
from 85 to 120 feet, and then let the dam taper till it was 
15 feet wide at the top. 

The main interest of the work lay in the vast pipes 
that were to carry the water and in the pumping engines. 
Each pipe was 28 feet long, was made of steel plates I inch 
thick, was 30 inches across, and weighed about ij tons. 
Sixty thousand of them had to be used to take the water to 
where it was wanted. The pipes were of an entirely novel 
type, each pipe being made in two semi-circular sections, 
and an hydraulic machine ensured the joint being tight. 
The pipes had to bear an enormous strain, and so each pipe 
before it was put in position was tested to see that it would 
bear the strain of 400 lb. on each square inch of surface. 
Pipes of these dimensions and in these numbers are not to 
be got everywhere, and when you remember that the total 
contract price for their delivery in West Australia was 
£1,025,000, it will not come as so great a surprise that 
the two Australian firms who secured the contract should 
have erected special works for carr5ang it out. 

Captain Amundsen, I remember, after returning from 
the South Pole, said in public that the chief factor on 
which success in Polar exploration depended was thorough 
and careful organisation. The same is true to an extra- 
ordinary extent in engineering, and of this the Coolgardie 
water scheme gives a striking example. Briefly, the problem 
was to pump 5,600,000 gallons per 24 hours against a total 
estimated head, including friction, of 2,700 feet through 
a pipe 30 inches in diameter, and, roughly, 330 miles, the 
speed of the water through the pipe being taken at about 
two feet a second. Eight pumping stations were installed. 



Great Water Schemes 57 

As the work is unique, we will trace the water from 
station to station. 

From Stations i to 4, in each station there are three 
complete sets of pumping machinery and boilers, any one 
of which is capable of pumping 2,800,000 gallons per 24 hours 
against a head of 450 feet, so that to get the full quantity 
of water two sets of engines and pumps are always pump- 
ing together into the main, and one set is " spare." From 
Stations 5 to 8 inclusive, there are at each station two 
sets of machinery, each set being capable of pumping 
5,600,000 gallons per 24 hours against a head of 225 feet, 
so that while one set is pumping, the other set is " spare." 
Station No, i is situated close to the foot of the great dam 
on the Helena River. The water is elevated 421 feet in daily 
work into an open concrete tank of a capacity of 468,000 
gallons, situated at No. 2 Station, the total distance from 
No. I being about i| miles. From No. 2 Station the water 
is pumped up about 360 feet through 23 miles of main to 
the first regulating tank of Baker's Hill, about 1,080 feet 
above sea-level. This tank is of concrete, with a capacity of 
500,000 gallons. The water runs from Baker's Hill by 
gravity to a second regulating 500,000-gallon concrete tank 
at Northam, 18 miles farther on, the Northam tank being 
94 feet lower than Baker's Hill. Still falling, the water 
reaches the great tank at Cunderdin, which holds 10,000,000 
gallons, and is y8 miles from the Helena reservoir. Stations 
3 to 7 pump the water against a steady rise to the 8th 
station at Dedari, a distance of 217 miles from Cunderdin, 
and situated at an elevation of 1,457 f^^^- Each station 
is provided with concrete tanks of 1,000,000 gallons capacity, 
which act as combined receiving and suction tanks. From 



58 All About Engineering 

Dedari, the water is pumped a distance of 12 miles to the 
main service reservoir at Bulla Bulling. This reservoir is 
of concrete, reinforced with barbed-wire strands, and holds 
12,000,000 gallons. Bulla Bulling suppUes a small service 
reservoir of 1,000,000 gallons on Toorak Hill, overlooking 
the town of Coolgardie, the mean elevation being 1,525 feet. 
From Toorak tank the water runs by gravity to a reservoir 
on Mount Charlotte, which supplies the town of Kalgoorlie. 
Several firms tendered to supply the machinery to carry 
out the work, but the contract went to Messrs. James 
Simpson and Co., of London. There is much of interest 
that could be written about the machinery employed to 
effect the pumping. I must content myself, however, with 
drawing attention to an ingenious arrangement whereby 
the water in the mains is made to pass through the con- 
densers of the engines, and the two sets of double- 
acting plungers ensure that one of them shall always be 
sending water to the mains,' so that the delivery is uniform 
and shocks are entirely avoided. Perhaps, however, the 
most important part of the machinery to the high-working 
economy is what is known as the Worthington high-duty 
attachment, by means of which the excess of power exerted 
by the steam in the cylinders at the beginning of the stroke 
is stored up and transmitted to the end of the stroke when 
the steam pressure, owing to expansion, is smallest. 

As I have said before, it is only necessary to bring 
out a new idea for the pessimists to start prophesying 
disaster. Some of the local experts, for instance, went 
about saying that at each revolution of the pumps the pipes 
would receive a blow of 60 tons to the square inch ; but, 
needless to say, the accomplishment of the scheme proved 



Great Water Schemes 59 

that nothing of the sort occurs. Personally, I have been 
led rather to distrust these rash prophecies that one hears 
from time to time, and on such occasions I call to mind 
the story — probably apocryphal — that is told of the late 
accomplished golfer, Freddie Tait, and his father, the 
famous philosopher. According to report. Professor Tait 
investigated the mathematical principles governing the 
flight of a golf-ball, and concluded that it was mathematic- 
ally impossible for a ball to be driven for more than a 
certain distance. The same afternoon he was on the Unks 
with his son, who, making a splendid drive, sent the ball 
several yards beyond the extreme limit his father had 
worked out as possible. As I said, there may be no truth 
in the story, but it is a good working rule to exercise the 
same distrust when you hear that a thing is theoretically 
impossible as when you hear a politician backing his views 
by sajdng " as history teaches." Theory is of paramount 
importance, the most valuable lessons can be learnt from 
a study of history, but the vaUdity of the conclusion in 
either case depends on the capacity of the man who attempts 
to draw it. 

One of the greatest problems in connection with the 
plant for the Kalgoorhe scheme was to get it, with its weight 
of 3,500 tons, out to the colony, and to have it sorted out and 
sent to the proper places up country. There were twenty 
groups of machinery, each consisting of an engine and 
boiler, and these had to be distributed over 330 miles of 
country. Obviously, if mistakes were made in consigning 
it would be a very expensive job to rectify them. An in- 
genious system of shipping was adopted which worked 
perfectly. Each group was given a distinctive colour and 



6o All About Engineering 

letter, and every part of the group was painted with the 
distinctive group colour to which it belonged. When the 
parts were cased, one end of the packing case was also 
painted with the correct group colour. In addition, each 
case or package was numbered consecutively, and marked 
with the different group letter. All marks were in duplicate, 
one set being painted on the case or package, and the other 
stamped on sheet-tin tabs, which were fastened on to the 
cases or packages. No parts of different groups were 
allowed to be packed in the same case, and by this means 
all trouble was avoided. The railway, shipping and wharf 
men were each supplied with coloured group key plans, 
and so were able to pick out at once the various cases and 
packages belonging to each group, and to send them on 
to their correct destination. The whole was a triumph of 
perfect organisation, for though there were some 5,000 
packages to be distributed, the only complaint received 
from the erection staff as to missing material referred to 
one |-inch hydraulic valve. 

The great work was successfully completed in 1903, five 
years after it was begun, and as it is usually described as 
being a unique piece of hydraulic engineering, it may be 
of interest to have a few of the figures relating to the 
scheme in tabular form : 

Total cost £3,252,700 

Capacity of reservoir . . . . . . 4,600,000,000 gallons 

Cubic yards of concrete in reservoir wall 82,000 

Area covered by operations . . . . 16,000 square miles 

Total length of 30-inch main . . . . 351I miles 

Number of towns served .... 26 

The time taken by the water in going 

from the reservoir to Kalgoorlie . . 4 weeks 



Great Water Schemes 6i 

Year's total of water supplied . . 1,058,931,000 gallons 

Year's working expenses . . . . £70,972 

Year's net revenue from scheme (1910) £166,696 
Interest on capital available for Sinking 

Fund and interest . . . . . . About 5 per cent. 

We are apt to associate irrigation with the warmer 
countries alone. Most of us have heard of Aden and its 
huge water tanks, and we have already seen that it was 
because of the experience the British engineers had got 
of irrigation works in India that they were able to carry 
through the gigantic scheme that was necessary to save 
Egypt from bankruptcy. From Egypt, Mesopotamia and 
Australia we will pass to Canada, and we shall see that 
there, too, the engineers have found that they can increase 
the productivity of the land by providing an artificial 
supply of water. Nature in the New World acts on a more 
grandiose scale than in the Old, and we can only admire 
the energy of that great undertaking, the Canadian Pacific 
Railway, which has quietly put in hand in Alberta a scheme 
for irrigating a block of land that is an eighth the size of 
England and Wales. It is a work on a large scale, as you 
can gather from the fact that when completed it will 
provide an irrigated area equal to more than a fifth of the 
total amount of irrigated land in the United States. As 
we have seen the general principles on which work of this 
kind is carried out, I wiU say no more of the project than 
that elaborate precautions are being taken to ensure that 
the waterways shall be free from all risk of leakage and 
breaks, and that the amount of material moved in the 
different sections will amount to 24,750,000 yards. The 
Company has decided to do the work thoroughly, and is 



62 All About Engineering 

making itself responsible not only for the main and the 
secondary canals, but also for the distributing ditches that 
carry the water to the individual farms. 

Great engineering works are closely interdependent, 
and if evidence were wanted to prove the economic 
value of such achievements in increasing the wealth of a 
community it would be amply shown in the fact, I think, 
that this great project, which provides for 2,900 miles of 
waterways, has, according to the Company's own claim, 
been put in hand for the definite purpose of transforming 
a large area at present unsettled and non-traffic producing 
into a closely settled and prosperous farming community, 
with the attendant traffic receipts that always result from 
such districts. For this reason, the scheme has not been 
undertaken to make money from the irrigation project 
itself, but as a colonisation and future traffic-producing 
investment. 

A final word, before I close this chapter, on the methods 
employed to furnish large cities with an adequate water 
supply. As you will realise from the special chapter that 
I have devoted to London, the metropolis alone requires 
for its people a volume of water about 20 feet square moving 
steadily towards it at the rate of two miles an hour ; and if 
one looks at the civihsation of the Old World, one can 
realise at once that the problem of the water supphes to 
the big centres was one that closely occupied attention. If 
Rome were represented to-day only by her aqueducts, we 
could deduce from the ruins an estimate of her real great- 
ness, and form an idea of the vast influence she wielded 
by the water channels that she laid down in various parts 
of her Empire. 



Great Water Schemes 63 

The sources of supply to a city are vastly different 
from those prevailing in the country. In many cases, the 
country house relies on a large cistern that catches the 
water that falls on the roofs in rain, but the town relies 
either on wells, or on great rivers, or else on vast lakes in 
which the water is banked back, and flows to its destina- 
tion through the force of gravity. All these sources of 
supply are often employed. We are so apt to think that 
we know all about an object with which we are famihar 
without really understanding the principles on which its 
working depends, that I am giving a brief account of 
the fundamental cause of springs. The earth's crust in any 
part of the world contains at a higher or a lower level 
strata that are impervious to water. The water above 
these strata runs along them, and accumulates in fissures 
and pockets, and to get a supply it is only necessary to 
bore down into one of these pockets. It may be that the 
water will issue of its own accord when such a pocket is 
cut into, for if the impervious stratum has been bent or is 
inchned, the pressure of the water on the higher levels 
will drive it out. In some cases it is necessary to use pump- 
ing apparatus. Where artificial boring has taken place, the 
weU is known as an artesian well (from Artois, the town 
in France where they have long been in use), and you 
will probably be surprised to hear that London derives 
one-fifth of its water from this source alone, the Bank of 
England itself being thus supplied. It is a matter of import- 
ance in cities to go deep enough below the surface to ensure 
that the supply is not tainted by surface conditions. 

The authorities that have to keep a great city supplied 
with water have to take a broad outlook on their problem. 



64 All About Engineering 

Few sights are more pitiful than those which can be seen 
when a water famine threatens a town, and the poorer 
classes flock into those parts where a supply can still be 
obtained. A heavy penalty indeed threatens a modern 
community if the water supply fails. Disease follows hard 
upon the track of discomfort, and little that can be done 
is of any avail. 

Whereas in the Kalgoorlie water scheme we saw that 
the engineers had to pump their water against gravity, the 
usual method is for advantage to be taken of gravity to 
bring the water to a town. Far away in the country great 
reservoirs are built, and big dams constructed to resist the 
force of the pent-up waters, for if these escape, they threaten 
the countryside with devastation. The sad story of one 
such catastrophe is still remembered in Sheffield. In March, 
1864, a landslip occurred near to the Dale Dyke reservoir, 
some six miles from Sheffield. The reservoir was full of water, 
and while the town was peacefully sleeping the embank- 
ment gave way, and hundreds of millions of gallons poured 
like an avalanche on to the town. Nothing could stand in 
the way, and when the flood had spent its force it left a 
wrecked town in its wake, with a tale of 268 dead. The 
water engineers learnt their lesson that night, and the 
reservoirs have now been so built as to avoid all chance 
of such a catastrophe. 

Gradually the big cities are seizing on the great catch- 
ment areas of the country to supply their needs. A scheme 
has even been put forward to impound the water in some 
of the Welsh valleys, and to bring it across England to 
London, a proposal that sounds almost grotesque, but is 
less so when you remember that the authorities have to 



Great Water Schemes 65 

keep available day by day a supply for 7,000,000 of 
people. 

The work of the water engineer is no sinecure, and he 
has to think in vast quantities. The iron pipes of his mains 
will be as much as if inches thick. He has to consider 
and provide against the dangers of frost. He must equip 
his works with a constant succession of valves to cut off 
the supply at a moment's notice should a burst occur. 
There must be reservoirs for filtering and purifying the 
water, great pumps for manipulating it, and anchors to 
keep the heavy pipes in place when they curve as they 
sweep on to their destination. Levels and gradients must 
all be taken into account to ensure that an undue strain is 
not imposed. A close watch must be kept to see that there 
is no unnecessary waste and great discretion exercised in 
controlling the sources, to avoid on the one hand the danger 
of floods, and on the other the risk of famine. The water- 
works of a city look unromantic enough, and scarcely 
suggest the skilled work that must be .spent upon them. 
They are, however, a vital factor in the well-being of every 
civilised city. 



CHAPTER V 

POWER AND ITS SOURCES — ^WIND, COAL, STEAM, ELECTRICITY, 
OIL, GAS, THE SUN AND THE ATOM 

One of the prime duties of the engineer is to manipulate 
and modify the forces that play upon the world. Power- 
less in his own strength to battle against a raging torrent, 
he is called upon to devise means to restrain it and to turrr 
its destructive force into the service of mankind ; helpless 
before the shocks of earthquake, he is bidden to advise a 
type of building strong enough and pliant enough to with- 
stand its attacks ; utterly insignificant before the sea when 
driven by the tempest, he has cast upon him the obligation 
to prevent the shingle being driven to silt up our harbours, 
and to hold back the sea itself as it threatens to prey upon 
our coasts ; he must provide warmth against the inclemency 
of the elements, and must devise shelter against the swelter- 
ing heat of the sun, and over and above all he must keep 
his fellow-men continually in possession of the energy that 
enables them to do the work of the world without imme- 
diately using the strength of their own muscles. 

Let us glance for a moment at a few of the innumer- 
able forces that are continually harnessed to the bidding 
of man. There is the wind driving the windmills, pumping 
water off the low-lying lands, bringing it up from below 
the ground, and speeding the ships across the trackless seas. 
There is steam giving the power to factories that are so 

66 



Power and Its Sources 67 

many as to defy even the statistician's imagination, making 
battleship, Hner and tramp independent of the wind, haul- 
ing our trains, propeUing motor cars, and, above all, generat- 
ing the handiest of man's servants — electricity ; there is 
electricity itself superseding its own parent steam, lighting 
our houses, giving cheap power to our factories, performing 
services of nearly every conceivable kind ; there is water 
that before the age of steam was one of man's kindliest 
servants, turning the wheels of his mills and reheving 
him of much of the tedious monotony of his work, and 
that now, after steam has had its great age of supremacy, 
is again coming into its own, by driving mighty turbines, 
as at Niagara, and generating electricity that is carried 
to far-distant cities, or that is used directly to form great 
arcs of flame which force the oxygen of the air into com- 
bination with the nitrogen to provide for agriculture the 
most valuable of all the manures ; there are gas and many 
forms of liquid fuel that actuate the engine by utilising 
the force of the explosion when they suddenly combine 
with the oxygen in the air ; there are the powerful explo- 
sives that rend the bowels of the earth, enabling men to 
remove hills, to drive tunnels, and to forge the deadliest 
weapons of destruction ; the force of gravity, and even 
the sun itself and the waves of the ever-restless sea, have 
been harnessed and pressed into man's employment, so 
that his resources may be still further multiplied. All 
these forces and many others, terrible as they are in their 
stupendous magnitude, the engineer must control and 
dominate. And one and all, as I shall try to show in the 
course of this chapter, are derived from the great parent 
of all, the sun. 



68 All About Engineering 

There was stern wisdom behind the men of old, and the 
men of to-day who pay their worship to the sun, for it is 
the sun and the sun alone that makes life possible upon the 
earth, and it is the sun that aids man in all his activities. 

The wind was probably the first of the natural forces 
ever used to carry out the heavier work of man. For my 
own part, I am content to trace it back as far as the times 
of the old blind singer of Greece, Homer, and to recall to 
you that Homer gives us a full description of how the 
greatest of all heroes of romance, Odysseus, built a boat 
to escape from the enchanted isle where Calypso kept him 
a not unwilling captive, and elaborates in detail the way 
in which he fitted a sail, and, with the winds favouring 
him, sailed back towards his home in Ithaca. For long 
the power of wind held sway, and to-day, to see it toiling 
in its harness, you have only to go over to Holland or 
to the Broads of Norfolk to watch the windmills steadily 
at work, pumping the water off the land to prevent it 
lying stagnant and turning the meadowland into a marsh. 
Windmills are to be seen scattered all over the country, 
and in recent years they appear again to be coming into 
favour, and are being fitted especially to raise water from the 
wells in country districts and to store it for use as it may 
be required. The world is now threatened with the ending 
of its coal supply, and it is the dream of the engineers so 
to harness the winds that they will give a constant source 
of power. The objection to the scheme is at present that 
coal is the more economical force, as is shown by the way 
in which steam-pumping engines have superseded many 
of the old windmills that were formerly in use upon the 
Broads, because the use of coal, in properly constructed 



Power and Its Sources 69 

engines, proves more economical in running than the wind- 
mill. Wind, however, has not yet been abandoned as a 
force. It still pays to construct huge saihng vessels, 
jfive-masters that can make quick passages across the 
Atlantic, and, indeed, to all parts of the world. It is not 
long since the amazing suggestion was made that our 
coasts should be equipped with windmills, that these should 
pump sea-water up into great reservoirs, and that a steady 
source of power should be got from the water as it ran 
back into the sea. I am afraid that the trouble about this, 
as about other schemes, would be that the cost of installing 
the apparatus would be so great that it would never 
pay to run. 

But what, you will ask, has the wind to do with the 
sun ? There are two chief sources of the wind. First, 
the earth, as it spins in space under the sun's influence, 
tends to spin through its own atmosphere, and we on the 
earth feel the air as it is left behind as a wind. Secondly, 
the air in the tropical regions is warmed by the heat of 
the sun. Warm air is lighter than cold, and therefore 
rises, its place being taken by the air from the temperate 
regions, while the tropical air having cooled, falls again 
towards the earth in the parts that are nearer to the poles. 

Man cannot long have become familiarised with the 
use of the wheel before he set himself to wonder if it would 
not be possible for him to utilise the force of running water 
to turn a wheel for him, and so to get command of a force 
that would serve to grind his corn. The labour of grinding 
corn for bread had been traditionally severe, and large 
profits were obviously to be earned as soon as a means 
was devised for getting the rivers to do the work that 



70 All About Engineering 

hitherto had always been done by hand. The primitive 
method is simple. There is a large wheel fastened to a 
long axle. The rim of the wheel is covered with open 
boxes, so arranged that water from above pours into them 
to fill the boxes on the one-half of the wheel, which empty 
as they reach the bottom, and come up empty on the other 
side. By the difference in the weight on the two sides 
of the wheel, it is kept constantly in motion. As it turns, 
the long axle turns with it, and by means of an arrange- 
ment of cog-wheels at the other end of the axle, machinery 
is driven. With the conquest of steam, white coal, as water 
power has been picturesquely called, fell into disrepute. 
Mills all over the country have been closed down, and it is 
only recently, as men have begun to realise that they are 
faced with the fear of a shortage of coal, that attention 
has again been called to the water of the world. The result 
is that a great section of men now look to it as one of the 
great sources of power to be tapped in the near future. 
Already, as I have mentioned, the great source of Niagara 
has been pressed into service. The water which before 
launched itself uselessly down the vast cataract is now led 
through mighty turbines, and the electricity generated from 
these is distributed to far-distant cities to carry on the toil 
that is the necessity of civilised existence. In Norway, too, 
in Switzerland, in Germany, and even in the Highlands 
of Scotland, the waterfalls have been harnessed and turned 
to the making of nitrates, and by this means the wheat 
famine that threatened the world has for the time being, at 
any rate, been avoided. In the "white coal," the world has 
a great store of energy of which it as yet hardly recognises 
the existence. At the British Association meeting in 191 2 an 



Power and Its Sources 71 

engineer read a paper urging on the members the desir- 
abiHty of taking full advantage of the many falls that exist 
in the Highlands, and of using their power to get energy 
independent of coal by turning the force of the falling 
water into electricity. But how, you will ask, is this energy 
derived from the sun ? The water supply of the world is 
one of the most grandiose cycles in Nature, dependent, like 
all the cycles of Nature, on the force of the sun. The sun's 
rays falling on the earth turn the earth's moisture into 
vapour that is drawn up into the clouds. As the air that 
becomes saturated with water vapour in its passage across 
the great oceans cools, it is no longer able to hold the same 
quantity of moisture, which condenses and falls to the 
earth as rain. The rain swelling the rivers, makes its way 
to the sea, and the engineer, taking advantage of the law 
of gravity, by which the water tries to reach the sea, the 
lowest level possible, is able to trap and use some of that 
portion of the sun's energy which was taken to vaporise 
the water on the earth, and thereby raise it into the sky. 
And now we come to steam that has revolutionised the 
face of the world, and probably done more than any other 
factor to increase the comfort of our life. The discovery 
that steam could be used as a motive power dates back 
to the Greeks and Romans. One of them discovered that 
it was only necessary to allow steam to escape through a 
series of nozzles supported by a carefully pivoted stem for 
the whole system to revolve, but it was not till modem 
times that the value of steam as a motive power was really 
determined. This is not the place for us to consider the 
steam-engine in detail, but the fundamentals of the engine 
may be described. Its essential parts are the furnace, 



72 All About Engineering 

cylinder, valves, piston, connecting rod and crank-shaft. 
The admission of steam into the cylinder by means of the 
valve forces forward the piston, and when it has completed 
a certain portion of its forward travel the steam supply is 
automatically cut off by the valve and steam admitted in 
front of the piston, thus driving it back again. The valve 
allows the spent steam to escape or " exhaust " after it 
has done its work. The cycle of operation continues, the 
reciprocating or to-and-fro motion of the piston being 
converted into a rotary motion through a crank-shaft which 
also operates the valves by means of eccentrics keyed on to 
it. Such an engine is a simple double-acting engine, but 
there are many other forms known as " compound " in 
which the steam is further made to do useful work in other 
cylinders, of which there may be one, two, or three. Such 
engines are called double, triple, or quadruple expansion 
engines, according to the number of cylinders. 

The uses of steam are too numerous to mention, and 
what boy is there who has not stood in wonder watching 
the railway engine hauling its heavy load of passenger 
wagons, or gazed at the great reciprocating engines in 
a ship's hold ? To all of us the threshing machine has 
been one of our earliest delights. We have noticed the 
development of the turbine that enables steam to work 
continuously by quite a different principle, and that 
gives to the engine a circular motion direct without any 
of the movements to and fro that tend to tear a 
rapidly moving machine to pieces. We have seen steam 
pressed in to all sorts of strange uses — to hammer metals, 
to drive motor-cars, to work cranes, to destroy the germs 
of disease, and to operate nearly every conceivable machine 



Power and Its Sources 73 

that man has invented. And steam, too, we derive direct 
from the sun. Steam, as you know, is got by heating water, 
and you can do this in various ways, by coal or oil, or by 
the direct heat of the sun itself. Both coal and oil are 
derived from the products of the great forests that flourished 
at a time when the earth was a vastly different place from 
what it is to-day, and now in the twentieth century we are 
setting free in the boilers of our engines and in the fires 
upon our hearths the rays of the sun that fell on this earth 
at a time £eons before history had begun to be written. 
I should like to make this a little plainer, for there is nothing 
I know much more beautiful than the mechanism by which 
Nature keeps the balance between animals and plants. The 
animal, as you know, breathes in the oxygen of the air, 
and he derives his energy by breaking down parts of him- 
self, or his food, into carbon dioxide, which then he breathes 
out. Naturally, if he has got a lot of energy from doing 
this, it would require a great deal of energy to recover the 
oxygen from this carbon dioxide. And this is the case. But 
the green leaf of the tree or plant contains a substance 
called chlorophyll, that is able by some marvellous mechanism 
to take hold of the energy of the sun's rays, and to use 
them to break down this carbon dioxide, to give back a 
portion of the oxygen to the air to be used up again by 
the animals, and to build up the carbon into its own tissues. 
The forest trees flourished and died while others grew in 
their stead, and in the process of time the country on 
which they stood has sunk below the level of the sea and 
the deposits of the waters have buried the coal measures 
beneath their silt. Then the land has risen again, and so 
it is that in working our steam engines to-day we are 



74 All About Engineering 

unlocking the stores of energy that the trees of long ago 
stored up from the sunbeams that fell upon the earth. 

If you were asked what was the most striking develop- 
ment of modern times, you would have some difficulty in 
answering, but you could make a good case for the view 
that it was the internal combustion engine. It has, at any 
rate, done more than any other force to drive the horses 
from our streets, and to make possible pleasant and rapid 
communication along the roads. The beauty of the internal 
combustion engine lies in this, that the energy of the fuel 
is used directly instead of it being necessary to get at it 
by the wasteful method of turning it into heat, and then 
passing it through steam. A mixture of the air and the 
oil to be exploded with it is brought directly into the 
cylinder of the engine. When the piston has reached the 
top of its stroke and the mixture of gas or vaporised oil is 
at its maximum compression, a spark in the cylinder ex- 
plodes the mixture, which drives the piston down the 
cylinder, and so the process continues afresh. It may be 
of interest to note that so early as 1678 a patent was taken 
out for an internal combustion engine that was to be worked 
by gunpowder. The possibilities before the internal combus- 
tion engine are immeasurably great. The time will come 
when the world's store of petrol and of coal is exhausted, 
and then, instead of spending day by day the capital that 
was stored up for us in the way of coal, we shall have to 
trap the sun's rays on a gigantic scale. There can, I think, 
be no doubt, but that one, at any rate, of the most efficient 
ways of doing this will be to sow great tracts of country with 
quick-growing plants, to use these plants to absorb the sun's 
energy with their chlorophyll, to distil them in such a way 



Power and Its Sources 75 

as to produce alcohol, and to use this alcohol as the motive 
power in internal combustion engines. The internal com- 
bustion engine is extending the sphere of its activities day by 
day. Railway locomotives have been constructed to use it, 
ships — it is hard not to write steam-ships — are being driven 
by it, small pumping and country house lighting plants are 
being installed all over the world on this system, and there 
can be no doubt that this type of engine is destined to still 
further development. And the oil and the gas again are 
products of the sun's activities, for both are derived from 
the forests that flourished in prehistoric times. 

It is in electricity, however, that the engineer has his 
most conspicuous success, for there is no neater form in 
which power can be handled. It is, of course, a secondary 
source of power, in that respect like steam, for no man yet 
has devised a means for harnessing the lightning flash. 
Coal must be burnt, water must be allowed to fall from a 
height, chemical energy must be degraded, or work done 
in order that electricity may be produced. From the funda- 
mental experiment that a piece of amber when rubbed 
will attract smaU pieces of paper, or dust, or fluff, man 
has passed to building vast machines that generate a 
stupendous amount of power, and distribute it to drive 
trains, to light lamps, to move the machinery in factories, 
to produce the fiercest intensities of heat, and to perform 
even such trivial services as the brushing of your hair at 
the hairdresser's. And electricity, whenever it is spon- 
taneously produced in Nature, is the result of the energy 
that the sun sends down to us in its unfaiHng supply. 

The force of gravity is still a mystery to us, and in it 
we have in a sense a source of power that is not derived 



76 All About Engineering 

from the sun. When we take advantage of the water that 
hurries downwards to the sea, we rely on the principle 
that everything on the earth is struggling to get as near 
as possible to the earth's centre, and we can make it pay 
us its toll as it passes on its way. The force of gravity 
direct is at the basis of water power. It is used in the 
treadmill, the weight of the prisoner's body turning a 
wheel much as the weight of water turns a water-wheel, but 
the muscular activity of the man raising him constantly as 
he tends to fall. Advantage has been taken of it in irriga- 
tion works, which are arranged so that the bullocks that 
draw the water from the well walk down hill as they do 
the work ; and countless other instances might be given. 
The idea of pressing the sea into service has long been 
one of men's dreams. They have thought of using the tides 
by entrapping the water as the tide flowed, and making 
it turn their wheels as it ebbed. They have thought, too, 
of taking advantage of the vast energy that is running to 
waste in the waves, and from time to time one reads of 
cases where this has been achieved. The time, no doubt, 
may come when it will be found possible to do this on a 
large scale, but at present no work of any considerable 
importance has been done along these lines. Only a few 
days ago I heard of an ingenious system which was said 
to be working, whereby the energy of the waves was used. 
On a sloping beach sets of rails have been laid down, and 
a machine is let down along these below the surface. As 
the waves reach the shore, they move the hinged shutters 
of this machine, and as these are harnessed, useful work 
is done. But whenever the sea is dangerously rough, the 
machines have to be drawn up the rails, out of harm's 




A MOTOR WORKED BY THE SUN'S RAYS 




A WONDERFUL ENGINEERING FEAT 

This oil tank weighing 150 tons was raised out of the ground, taken down a hill, 
conveyed a mile by river, and then carried 200 feet up a steep bank to its new site 



Power and Its Sources ^^ 

way. The waves, through the medium of the winds, are 
the result of the influence of the sun, but if ever general 
advantage were taken of the tides we should have an 
instance of man having drawn upon the moon as a source 
of the energy he constantly needs. 

What of the sun itself ? The idea of using it directly 
is another engineering ideal. You have heard of Archimedes 
of Syracuse, and how he focused the rays of the sun on 
to the mooring ropes of a hostile fleet and burnt them 
through. The story may or may not be true, but there 
is nothing impossible about it. Indeed, there was a case 
years ago in which the covering of a bed in the berth of a 
steam tug in Plymouth Sound was burnt by the concentra- 
tion of the sun's rays through the glass deadlights in the side 
of the vessel. About the same time a fire was caused at 
Paignton by the ignition of some canvas on to which the 
globular lamp over an ornamental gate had concentrated 
solar rays. There are to-day practical engines at work 
that make use of the rays of the sun as the fuel for their 
boilers. Further, it has been suggested that the vast 
waste torrid spaces of the Sahara Desert will, in time to 
come, be the site of the world's great power factory. 
So far, the sun-engine is a great steam-engine, the credit 
for the successful invention belonging to Mr. Frank Shu- 
man, of Philadelphia, and the sun's rays taking the place 
of the fuel. His method is to have a great series of iron 
boxes painted dark so as to absorb the heat. These are 
filled with water and covered with panes of window glass. 
On each side of the window glass are mirrors that reflect 
the sun's rays on to the glass above the iron water-con- 
taining boxes. The extreme heat of the tropical sun 



78 All About Engineering 

turns the water in the boxes into steam, the steam is led 
by a large pipe to a specially constructed engine, is then 
condensed back to water and returned to the boxes to be 
used over and over again. The efficiency of the machine 
is such that in Philadelphia, which is fer from being the 
most favourable of all possible sites, it is able to raise 
3,000 gallons of water every minute to a height of 33 feet. 
The invention has aroused the interest of engineers ; a 
specimen machine has been ordered for Egypt, and it may 
well be that a great future lies before it. 

The use of compressed air is a factor in the manipula- 
tion of power, to which I must make reference here. Logic- 
ally, it belongs rather to the class of instruments such as 
levers and blocks and screws and wedges, as a means of 
manipulating and applying power, and these, for want of 
space, I am compelled to pass over in silence. But com- 
pressed air is used for such a variety of purposes that a 
few may be referred to. In salvage work, we shall hear a 
good deal about it, for it is one of the chief weapons that 
the salvage man uses, making his sunken vessel air-tight, 
and then pumping air into it to displace the water. It is 
used in place of steam to fasten rivets, drive drills, and even 
to punch holes in metals. It can operate railway signals 
and drive trams along the streets, it can enable divers to 
work in diving-bells beneath the water, and is pressed into 
the service of municipalities for the sand-blasts with which 
many public buildings are cleansed. 

The layman is so little apt to look on explosives as 
sources of power from the engineer's point of view, that 
I propose to give here a few instances of the great engineer- 
ing feats that have been carried out by these means. But 



Power and Its Sources 79 

before doing so I should like to point out that in this case, 
too, if we go far enough back, we can look on the sun as the 
source of the energy. The principle of the explosive is that 
it is a body with a vast amount of potential chemical energy, 
so stored that it can suddenly be degraded. Thus, in gun- 
powder, there is the carbon. We know what a powerful 
source of heat energy carbon can be, as, for instance, when 
it is burnt in the ordinary fire. The nitrate in the powder 
supplies the oxygen necessary for the process to take place, 
and the sulphur is another body that can give out great 
energy, as it is degraded to sulphur dioxide. The other 
types of explosive act similarly. They are bodies that are 
very unstable, and that, with the necessary stimulus, give 
up their store of energy, their solids suddenly turning with 
great violence into gases. I have been reminded of some 
of the uses to which the engineer puts explosives by read- 
ing in the newspapers of the dislodging of 30,000 tons of 
rock on Mr. A. J. Balfour's estate in East Lothian. Blast- 
ing on that scale is not done every day, and several of the 
newspapers recalled some of the other great feats that have 
been done in this connection. Among the more notable 
instances are the following : In the great slate quarries 
in Carnarvonshire a mass of granite had been left while 
the softer slate was being excavated. The rock, 214,000 
tons of it, overhung the workings, menacing the quarry- 
men, and it was decided to blast it out. Galleries were 
cut, 5,000 lb. of blasting gelatine was put in place, and 
the whole of this vast quantity of material was blown 
bodily into the valley beneath. The blasting up of Hell 
Gate was another great achievement. Hell Gate was a 
group of dangerous rocks, close to New York, and that 



8o All About Engineering 

it fully deserved its gruesome title may be gathered from 
the statement that it was estimated that one in fifty of 
all the craft navigating those waters was wrecked upon 
it. For over a year men were engaged in boring galleries. 
Four miles of tunnel were eventually made, and these 
were filled with dynamite. Electricity exploded the mass, 
and with this one gigantic explosion, 6 acres of solid rock 
were removed, and the passage cleared for navigation. 
I will give one further instance, of many, of the ways in 
which the engineer makes use of explosives to help him 
in his work. As you will read in the chapter on marine 
salvage, blasting is frequently used below the water, in 
order to salve a vessel, but the case of the Chatham was 
one of those where the blasting was undertaken to destroy. 
The Chatham, a steamer of 3,200 tons, had as her cargo, 
in 1905, 1,500 tons of super-phosphates, 500 tons of pig- 
iron, 800 tons of coke, 19 tons of explosives and 16 cases 
of detonators. In passing through the Suez Canal she 
came into collision and caught fire. As there was a danger 
of the fire reaching her explosives, she was sunk and sub- 
merged to a depth of between 25 and 30 feet. Two cases 
of dynamite floated out of the hold, and to their horror, 
the authorities found that from these nitro-glycerine was 
exuding. If this happened to come into contact with the 
pig-iron, there was a danger that chemical action might 
set off the whole mass of the explosives. The sunken 
Chatham was, in fact, a gigantic mine, lying right in the 
track of the steamers. The canal authorities having decided 
to blow the vessel up, took elaborate precautions. A force 
of soldiery was despatched to prevent any one approach- 
ing within six miles. Special charges were lowered down 



Power and Its Sources 8i 

into the ship, and from 3 J miles away the fuses were fired. 
The column of mud, water, sand, and debris rose into 
the air to a height of nearly 1,000 yards, and it was 35 
seconds from the time of the explosion before the mass 
shot up fell back to earth. The explosion damaged the 
bank of the canal, taking away a breadth of 35 yards for 
a distance of 120 yards in the neighbourhood of the explo- 
sion. But the steamers were then able to pass through 
the canal in safety. 

In writing this chapter I am conscious that I have 
only touched the fringe of the subject, but I shall have 
succeeded in my object if I have given you some idea of 
the great forces that the engineer is called on to control 
and adapt in the course of his work. The little remaining 
space that I can spare I want to devote to a wonderful 
dream of the future. 

Matter, as you know, is built up of tiny atoms, and 
these atoms contain within their minute size enormous 
quantities of energy. Of late years — chiefly through the 
discovery of radium — ^we have learnt a great deal about 
the constitution of these atoms, and men of science are 
now working to try and find out if they cannot devise a 
means for drawing upon this store of energy. Several men 
have written of it, but Professor Frederick Soddy, one of 
the leading workers on the subject, in his book on Radium? 
has given such a brilliant exposition of the possibilities that 
lie before man if he can but learn how to break up the 
atom, that I should like to quote his actual words. He 
has kindly given me permission to do so. Professor Soddy 
writes* • 

* "The Interpretation of Radium," by Frederick Soddy. 
G 



82 All About Engineering 

" It is, indeed, a strange situation we are confronted 
with. The first step in the long, upward journey out of 
barbarism to civilisation which man has accomplished 
appears to have been the art of kindling fire. Those savage 
races who remained ignorant of this art are regarded as 
on the very lowest plane. The art of kindling fire is the 
first step towards the control and utilisation of those natural 
stores of energy on which civilisation, even now, absolutely 
depends. Primitive man existed entirely on the day-to- 
day supply of sunlight for his vital energy, before he learnt 
how to kindle fire for himself. One can imagine before this 
occurred that he became acquainted with fire and its 
properties from naturally occurring conflagrations. 

" With reference to the newly recognised internal stores 
of energy of matter, we stand to-day where primitive man 
first stood with regard to the energy liberated by fire. We 
are aware of its existence solely from the naturally occur- 
ring manifestations in radio-activity. At the climax of that 
civilisation, the first step of which was taken in forgotten 
ages by primitive man, and just when it is becoming apparent 
that its ever-increasing needs cannot indefinitely be borne 
by the existing supplies of energy, possibilities of an entirely 
new material civilisation are dawning with respect to 
which we find ourselves stiU on the lowest plane — that of 
onlookers with no power to interfere. The energy which 
we require for our very existence, and which Nature supplies 
us with grudgingly, and in none too generous measure for 
our needs, is in reality locked up in immense stores in the 
matter all around us, but the power to control and use it 
is not yet ours. What sources of energy we can and do use 
and control, we now regard as but the merest leavings of 



Power and Its Sources 83 

Nature's primary supplies. The very existence of the latter 
till now have remained unknown and unsuspected. When 
we have learned how to transmute the elements at will 
the one into the other, then, and not till then, will the key 
to this hidden treasure-house of Nature be in our hands. 
At present, we have no hint of how even to begin the 
quest. . . . 

" Let us give the imagination a moment's further free 
scope in this direction, however, before closing. What if 
this point of view that has now suggested itself is true, 
and we may trust ourselves to the slender foundation 
afforded by the traditions and superstitions which have 
been handed down to us from a prehistoric time ? Can 
we not read into them some justification for the belief that 
some former forgotten race of men attained not only to 
the knowledge we have so recently won, but also to the 
power that is not yet ours ? Science has reconstructed the 
history of the past as one of a continuous Ascent of Man 
to the present-day level of his powers. In the face of the 
circumstantial evidence existing of this steady, upward 
progress of the race, the traditional view of the Fall of Man 
from a higher former state has come to be more and more 
difficult to understand. From our new standpoint, the two 
points of view are by no means so irreconcilable as they 
appeared. A race which could transmute matter would 
have little need to earn its bread by the sweat of its brow. 
If we can judge from what our engineers accomplish with 
their comparatively restricted powers of energy, such a 
race could transform a desert continent, thaw the frozen 
poles, and make the whole world one smiling Garden of 
Eden. Possibly, they could explore the outer realms of 



84 All About Engineering 

space, emigrating to more favourable worlds as the super- 
fluous to-day emigrate to more favourable continents. 
One can see also that such dominance may well have been 
short-Uved. By a single mistake, the relative positions of 
Nature and man as servant and master would, as now, 
become reversed, but with infinitely more disastrous con- 
sequences, so that even the whole world might be plunged 
back again under the undisputed sway of Nature, to begin 
once more its upward toilsome journey through the Ages. 
The Legend of the Fall of Man possibly may indeed be 
the story of such a past calamity." 



CHAPTER VI 

ROADS — THE WORK OF THE ROMANS — A BLIND BRIDGE 
BUILDER — THE ROAD SURFACE — HISTORIC ROADS 

A WOULD-BE wit has remarked on the folly of the farmers 
who select the muddiest portion of their field as the site of 
their gateway into it. The remark is of value as in an epi- 
grammatic way it draws our attention to the importance 
of the road, and to the necessity of care being taken in 
its construction. The road is so common a phenomenon 
in our everyday experience that we are apt to under- 
estimate its importance, just as we habitually under-estimate 
the value of the bread we eat, the water we drink, and the 
air we breathe. Our indifference to the road, it is true, is 
less now than it was in the period intervening between 
the introduction of railways and the invention of the 
bicycle and the motor-car, for there are now few of us who 
have not realised the difference to our comfort between a 
well- and an ill-constructed road. Most of us, however, do 
not let our interest in the subject go beyond abusing the 
road authorities for their slackness in not troubling to 
repair the roads, and in the present chapter I want to 
show that the construction of a satisfactory highway 
demands the exercise of ripe knowledge and of carefully 
thought-out scientific principles. 

Macaulay has well said that "of all inventions, the 
alphabet and the printing-press alone excepted, those 

85 



86 All About Engineering 

inventions which abridge distance have done most for the 
civihsation of our species." Not the least of the reasons 
for which we admire the Romans is because, as empire 
builders, they realised to the full the obligation that lay 
upon them to construct roads through the territories they 
administered. I would advise any boy who has not done 
so, and is fond of bicycling, to travel the length of the 
Great North (Roman) road as it stretches from London 
to Edinburgh. He will find in the passage much of interest 
to him — fine open country, mile upon mile of magnificent 
sea scenery near Berwick, and a perfect road from end 
to end. And as he travels over its surface he will not forget 
to be grateful to the old Roman legionaries who built so 
well that their work has defied the ravages of time. As 
Hugh Miller, the geologist, pointed out, the Roman legion- 
aries at times thought more of military netessities than 
of the influence their roads were to have on the country. 
On occasions, though they drained many of the fens, their 
work was such that fresh bogs originated by their cutting 
roads through the forests. As Miller said when lecturing 
on geology, the felled wood was left to rot on the surface, 
small streams were choked up in the levels, pools formed in 
the hollows, the soil beneath, shut out from the light and 
the air, became unfitted to produce its former vegetation. 
But a new order of plants, the thick water mosses, began to 
spring up ; one generation budded and decayed over the 
ruins of another ; and what had been an overturned forest 
became in the course of years a deep morass. 

We can forgive the Romans the damage they thus 
wrought, for in return in other parts they give us a net- 
work of splendid roads. The principles on which they built 



Roads 87 

were thorough and comprehensive. To mark out the road, 
ditches were built parallel to one another. The surface in 
between — you must remember that the Romans were 
driving their paths through wild territory — was excavated 
until a firm foundation had been reached. If a foundation 
was not available, one was constructed by driving in piles. 
On the basis thus laid were placed four layers. First, came 
a series of stones of a moderate size, called the statumen. 
Then followed the rubble or rudus, 9 inches of it, small 
stones rammed together and solidly bound with lime. 
On the top of it followed the nucleus, 6 inches thick, and 
this consisted of finely-broken brick, pottery and so forth, 
the whole again cemented with lime. Lastly, on these 
foundations the Romans built their surface of large blocks 
of the hardest stone they could find carefully fitted in 
together so that they should not lift under the influence of 
the traffic. When you watch the road-makers at work 
repairing one of these typical old Roman roads, with their 
carts of road metal and their steam-rollers, you would 
hardly imagine that it is on all this depth of foundation 
laid by the Romans that they are building the present- 
day surface. 

The roads in Great Britain afford abundant evidence of 
the genius of the Romans, but Mr. Athol Maudslay, in a 
book he wrote some years ago — " Highways and Horses " 
— quotes an example of brilliant road construction that 
amazed me when I read of it. He writes : 

" The grotto Pausilipo, near Naples, is a tunnel through 
which the high road from Naples to Pozzuoli passes. With 
this tunnel I am well acquainted, having frequently ridden 
through it on horseback ; it is cut out of the soHd rock. 



S8 All About Engineering 

its length is two-thirds of a mile, and it is 60 feet in height, 
and wide in proportion. This tunnel is of great, but un- 
known, antiquity. Seneca, in his fifty-seventh epistle, com- 
plains of its length, darkness and dust. It is now well 
lighted, both by night and day, with lamps on either side, 
and is also fairly well paved ; it was enlarged in the year 
1557. Seneca speaks of it as follows : ' Nihil illo carcere 
longius, nihil illis faucibus obscurius.' " 

Before we come to modern views and modern practice, 
I cannot pass over without mentioning the amazing engineer- 
ing feat in road construction performed by Metcalf, a man 
who lost his sight at six years of age from an attack ol 
smallpox. Incredible as it sounds, he would follow the 
hounds on horseback, was a first-rate judge of horses, used 
to make his way all over the country alone, and was a 
great constructor of roads. The problem was one day set 
him to build a road from Huddersfield to Manchester, and 
he found, to his dismay, that it had to pass over a bog. 
He was advised to dig down to a foundation, but refused. 
Instead, he cut a trench on either side of the intended road, 
threw the excavated material inwards, filled his trenches 
with heather, covered the track itself with heather, laid 
transversely, and on it built his road of gravel. So that 
it is to Metcalf, the bUnd road surveyor, that we owe the 
first idea of a floating road, an idea subsequently made 
use of by George Stephenson when he built his railway 
over Chatmoss. 

The revival of road construction in England is asso- 
ciated with the name of Telford, but we will content our- 
selves with noting that his principle was to make a rough 
stone pavement, and on it to build a road surface. When 



Roads 89 

we come to MacAdam, whose name we still remember 
when we talk of macadamised roads, we are really in 
modern times. It seems a paradox to write that MacAdam 
applied to the roads the same principle that Smeaton 
applied to the building of the Eddystone Lighthouse, but 
such is the case. In both the essential idea was to devise 
a monolithic structure, one, that is, in which each portion 
would tend to aid in the strength of the whole, and in 
which any strain delivered to a portion would be borne 
by the whole. As Colonel R. E. Crompton has written : 
" Since MacAdam established the principle that if road 
metal be broken up into angular fragments not exceeding 
2 inches in diameter, it can be pressed into a monolithic 
surface, and thus be rendered capable of spreading the 
weight of the wheel over a greater area of the foundation 
underlying it, aU that was further required was to perfect 
the system by cheapening the process of breaking and 
consolidating the metal ; but unfortunately, the road 
authorities of England have been lulled into false security 
by the many years of excessively light traffic on their 
roads during the period when they were used practically 
only for local traffic ; so that they have used faulty 
materials and faulty methods of construction, the con- 
sequences of which the public are now reaping in the dis- 
integration, dust and rough surface caused by the resump- 
tion of traffic. For this the motor-car is not really respon- 
sible. If the present amount of road traffic, which is due 
to the demand for fresh air and a sight of the country at 
week-ends, had to take place with horse-drawn vehicles, 
the nuisance to those resident near the main roads would be 
almost, if not quite, as serious as at present ; for, although 



go All About Engineering 

the speed would be less and the dust raised less, a larger 
number of horses would be used, so that the badly con- 
structed roads would be chipped and broken to an even 
greater extent than they are at present ... It is un- 
necessary to labour the matter further than to point out 
that the present system of relying on water as a means of 
holding the top of the road in position cannot longer be 
tolerated." 

Colonel Crompton, who was in charge of the Govern- 
ment steam train in India, and who also held an important 
post in connection with army transport in South Africa, 
is one of the great apostles in this country of the water- 
proofed road. It may be regarded now as an axiom that 
a road must consist of foundation and crust, and the chief 
points to be determined are the materials and arrangement 
that are best fitted for this double purpose. The ideal 
road of the future will consist of a foundation that must 
aim at being permanent, and of a surface layer that will 
from time to time be taken up and repaired. If this is to 
be achieved, it will be necessary for the surface to consist 
of asphalt or some such material, while the under layer 
will be composed of road metal carefully broken to gauge, 
and properly laid on a properly prepared subsoil. The 
essential, in fact, will be for us to approximate the condi- 
tions of the country roads to those of the towns, and to 
realise that, with the increasing use to which the roads 
are subjected, it will pay to have them properly constructed. 
To quote again from Colonel Crompton : " The author has 
in his mind one hole in the wood pavement near the Royal 
Albert Hall, which was noticeable eighteen months ago ; 
it could have been repaired at any time at the cost of los., 




PJioto : y. Boyer, Payis 

SAW GUTTING WOODEN BLOGKS FOR GITY STREETS 

View showing carriage lifted and work in progress 



Roads 9^ 

and it has damaged vehicles of all kinds to the extent of 
possibly several hundred pounds." 

The evil of the water-bound road lies in the fact that 
in most cases the road is too dry, so that the finer material 
is loosened, moved, and eventually lifted by the wheels of 
passing vehicles and blown away by the wind in the shape 
of dust ; or in wet times these same particles form, with 
the excess of water, a fluid mixture which acts as a lubricant 
to the larger pieces of road metal, allowing them to roll 
on one another and grind themselves into powder, instead 
of retaining them firmly in their place. 

It would take us too far afield to discuss several of the 
problems that lie before the road engineer. One of his 
aims will be to reduce what is known as the camber or 
slope of the road, designed to facilitate drainage, and this 
when roads are waterproofed will be an easy matter ; 
it has long been his duty to do all in his power so to design 
the run of the road that it shall follow the easiest possible 
gradient. A neglect of this principle made the now-con- 
demned Southwark Bridge useless for traffic, as the slope 
was too steep for it to be practicable for horses to draw 
heavy loads to the bridge level, and we have little sympathy 
to-day with the Indian Department, which, to the remon- 
strance of an executive engineer who complained that the 
slope of I in 30 to a bridge was so steep that it caused a 
block in the traffic on the road, replied that the true remedy 
was to improve the breed of cattle in the country. Elabo- 
rate trials of materials and construction have still to be 
made. But to show the intricate machinery that is to-day 
employed in the preparation of the wood blocks used on the 
London streets, I am including a photograph of one of those 



92 All About Engineering 

gigantic machines. For our asphalt we have gone even 
to remote Trinidad, and that you may appreciate the way 
in which the pitch that is its basis may be found in Nature, 
I am quoting the account that Mr. CHfford Richardson 
wrote of it in the pages of the Popular Science Monthly : 
" The surface or deposit of the lake is not a uniform ex- 
panse. It is grassy along the edges, and becomes free from 
vegetation at some distance from the centre. Shrubs and 
small trees occur in a few cases, known as islands. The 
patches move from place to place with the movement of 
the pitch at the surface. The main mass of asphalt is a 
broad expanse of pitch made up of separate areas of irre- 
gular outline, but at times quite circular, which are sepa- 
rated by channels filled with rain water, which prevents 
their coalescence. The boundaries are depressed and the 
centres of their areas are always somewhat elevated above 
the edges, that is to say, they are mushroom-like. The 
origin of the separate areas evidently lies in the constant 
movement of the crude material, due to the evolution of 
gas at the centre, from which point the pitch rolls over 
towards the edges. This is shown by the fact that pieces 
of wood which emerge erect at the centre are gradually 
carried to the circumference, their deflection from the 
perpendicular increasing as the distance from the centre 
increases. At the channel they topple over and are again 
engulfed in the pitch." 

I have devoted considerable space to the question of 
road surface construction, because that, after all, is the 
aspect of the question with which most of us are more 
nearly concerned. When we try to review the question 
in a broad way, it comes to us as rather a surprise to realise 



Roads 93 

that road-building, apart from the wonderful activity of 
the Romans, has been almost entirely a work of modern 
enterprise. When Mr. MacGeorge wrote an account of the 
ways and works in India, he brought home the strangeness of 
the idea of making roads in the beginning of the last century 
by an anecdote relating to Lord Elphinstone at the time 
when he was appointed to be Governor of Madras. Elphin- 
stone proposed the construction on a comprehensive scale 
of new roads in the Madras Presidency, and the idea 
appeared so ridiculous to the man in authority at that 
time that one member of the Council wrote home a com- 
plaint to England that " the silly young nobleman actually 
talks of making roads." On another occasion, when the 
Government sent out circulars asking the district collectors 
to send in a statement of what district roads they con- 
sidered necessary to develop the resources of the country, 
among the replies received was the amazing one from a 
collector that in his district " no roads were required, because 
the people there did not use carts, but carried everything 
in panniers on the backs of bullocks." 

In the time that has passed since these remarks India 
has made good in a marvellous way. She has furnished 
examples of road construction, carried out in circumstances 
of amazing difficulty, when the engineers have had to 
contend both against the obstacles placed by Nature in 
the shape of mountainous country and the ill-will of the 
tribes through whose territory the road has had to be cu 
As often as not the work has been carried out under con- 
ditions like those that attended the rebuilding of Jerusalem, 
where the men had to be at once both warriors and masons. 
The Grand Trunk Road that stretches in practically an 



94 All About Engineering 

unbroken line from Calcutta to Peshawar, traversing a 
length of 1,500 miles, reaching close to the Khyber Pass 
of Afghanistan, has long been one of the world's famous 
roads. It is the road that Mr. Kipling has immortalised 
in " Kim," and its construction by British engineers is 
one of the title-deeds by which we hold the Indian Empire. 
This road takes us back to the days of the great Empire- 
builders, for it was under the rule of Warren Hastings that 
the scheme was first inaugurated. But the father of the 
road was Lord William Bentinck. Throughout its length 
the road was well drained and weU metalled, raised every- 
where above the height of floods and inundations. Timber 
trees were planted along the side to give shade. Halting- 
places or encamping grounds were arranged at suitable 
intervals for the convenience of merchants and goods, and 
at every ordinary stage for troops on the march ; enclosures 
for shops, and open encamping grounds, marked off and 
kept clear from cultivation, were established. Rest houses 
for the better class of travellers were also provided at 
distances of 10 or 15 miles along the road. The difficulties 
met with were of no light order, for you must remember 
that the engineers were working under conditions of which 
they had no experience, and were forced to build bridges 
that would withstand the force of raging torrents. One of 
the bridges they built, which went over the Lelajaum River, 
consisted of twenty-six 50-feet arches, and the builders 
were not men who could draw either on highly skilled 
labour or on expert advice. They were engineers of the 
road, men who had to wrestle with their own problems for 
the most part alone, and to find a way out for themselves. 
There are other ways of crossing a river than by bridging 



Roads 95 

it/ and one of the devices to which recourse was often had 
with the larger rivers was to build a causeway in the 
river-bed. Often enough in India the great rivers run 
almost dry except for a few months in the year, and in 
such cases the approaches to the river-bed were cut down 
to an easy slope and a causeway was driven across it, 
care being taken to make it strong enough to prevent it 
being carried away in the period of the floods. I am in- 
debted to Mr. MacGeorge's work for the account of the 
method employed in the case of the causeway that runs 
across the Sone, near Mirzapur. This was 11,450 feet long, 
or over 2 miles in length. The paved roadway, 16 feet in 
\vidth, was formed of stone slabs, 9 feet to 7 feet long, about 
1 1 feet broad and i foot thick. A foundation was provided 
by first driving two parallel rows of common junglewood 
piles to a depth of about 15 feet, for the purpose of sup- 
porting bamboo frames and mats temporarily to hold up 
the sides of the sand excavation that was to be made 
between the two rows of piles. The sand being excavated 
and a trench dug of the requisite depth and width, a layer 
of gunny bags, filled with concrete made of river shingle 
and lime, was set closely packed together over the whole 
bottom of the trench. On these bags a layer 2 feet 6 inches 
thick of rubble stone was laid set in similar concrete, on 
which the long paving stones forming the causeway were 
placed crossways in alternate long and short lengths so 
as to break joint. The joints of the stones were then pointed 
and filled in with good hydraulic mortar, and the surface 
of the causeway finally levelled, but left rough enough 
to afford a secure foothold for draught animals. 

The constructors of the Grand Trunk Road have long 



96 All About Engineering 

ago gone to their rest, but when Mr. E. F. Knight joined 
Colonel Durand's expedition against the raiding Hunza- 
Nagars, in 1891, in Kashmir, the experiences he had there 
enabled him to give those at home an account of the enter- 
prise, courage and resource with which the work of road- 
building is still carried out by the road-builders in India. 

Mr. Charles Spedding was Mr. Knight's fellow traveller 
to Kashmir, and was engaged on the construction of some 
strategic roads in the country, and when Mr. Knight 
decided to publish his experiences in book form, under the 
title, " Where Three Empires Meet," he included an account 
of several incidents in connection with this work of road 
construction. The old road leading from Srinagur to Gilgit 
was a rough track, so narrow in the more precipitous parts 
that two mules meeting could not get by each other ; it 
WcLS almost impassable for a mountain mule battery, and 
it was quite the usual thing for baggage animals to slip 
off the dangerous path and be lost in the torrent beneath. 

The suffering caused by the old road was pitiful. Un- 
fortunate coolies would be dragged from their homes in 
different parts of the State to carry loads over it, never 
to return, but to die of cold or starvation on the roadside. 

Mr. Spedding had need of all his powers of organisation 
to look after his gang of 5,000 native navvies. The men 
could not live in the country, for it was barren and desolate, 
and all supplies — food, clothing and so forth — had to be 
carried over the passes, and when the work was projected 
it was still a matter of uncertainty whether sufficient food 
could or could not be brought through. Where the old 
road would zigzag up the hill-side, the engineers would 
blast a gallery along the chff face. This is Mr. Knight's 



Roads 97 

comment on a portion of the route : " The Hne of the new 
road will be somewhere between two native roads. The 
engineering difficulties presented here are very great, and 
it must be almost impossible to construct a road that will 
not be repeatedly swept away by the falling rocks, while 
the loose mountain side, even rocky as it is, affords 
the least secure of foundations. It was anticipated that 
there would be numerous accidents among the navvies 
employed on this section of the road while working on 
this perilous mountain, and I heard that upwards of 30 
men had been killed here before I left the country, having 
been struck by falHng rocks, or precipitated into the abyss 
by the crumbling away of their foothold." 

In those out-of-the-way parts of the world a road- 
engineer has to perform many curious tasks. He may be 
called upon to administer justice of a rough-and-ready 
order. A strange occurrence of this sort arose from the 
claim made by a native that some of the Afghans working 
on a section of the road had forcibly seized a sheep, and 
had stolen out of a house a valuable olive-wood casket, 
20 rupees, and a robe of honour. The engineer ordered 
accuser and accused to come before him in the evening. 
One of the gang was suspected, and before night repre- 
sentatives of the gang concerned came to the engineer, 
asking him to allow them to settle the matter among them- 
selves, according to their own custom, undertaking that 
the property should be found. A deep hole was dug in the 
ground, and as soon as it was quite dark every man of the 
gang in turn went alone, unobserved of the others, and 
poured into the hole his lapful of earth. The next morning 
the villagers were instructed to search in the loose earth. 



98 All About Engineering 

and there they discovered the casket, the money, the robe 
of honour, and the price of the sheep, no man knowing 
who it was that had restored the property. 

For an account of the campaign itself, where, with 
scarcely twenty British officers engaged, three won the 
Victoria Cross, and a fourth was awarded the Distinguished 
Service Order, I must refer you to Mr. Knight's book. Our 
connection with it at the moment is because Mr. Spedding 
transferred himself and some of his men from the Gilgit road 
work as a sapper and miner corps. This is the appreciation 
that Mr. Knight, who you must remember is an experienced 
war correspondent, felt justified in writing of the services 
rendered during the campaign by the road engineers : 

" Spedding had volunteered to place himself and his 
men at the disposal of the Government for the purposes 
of this expedition. Their work had been most arduous, 
their conduct under fire and their discipline had been 
admirable. It would be difficult, I imagine, to mention 
an instance since the Mutiny days of such splendid service 
rendered by civilians in time of war. Spedding, with his 
talent for organisation, and his great experience in the 
transport and the feeding of large bodies of men in a desert 
country hundreds of miles from the base, was an invaluable 
aid to Colonel Durand. This good work Wcis done in a 
patriotic spirit, not for pecuniary remuneration, but at a 
considerable cost to Spedding himself. Such men deserve 
well of their country." 

The road-engineer is faced with many of the same 
difficulties that beset the railroad surveyor, and in con- 
nection especially with railway construction the men who 
go out into the world to survey a line of route must 



Roads 99 

often carry their lives in their hands. Their ingenuity has 
continually to be exercised to provide an escape from the 
difficulties presented by material conditions. Tunnels must 
at times be cut through the rock where a suitable way or 
road cannot be made, and at times, as at the Simplon Pass, 
a special channel has to be built to carry a stream right 
over the head of a road. In such mountainous districts as 
the Alps shelves have to be made so as to enable the 
avalanches of snow or rocks to shoot clear over the road 
and pass harmlessly into the depths below. In the Stelvio 
Pass, the loftiest road in Europe, that reaches 9,000 feet 
high and serves as a passage between Austria and Italy, 
the road can only reach the summit by a series of zigzags, 
and even then it is only open to traffic for a few months 
in the year. In Paris they have widened one of the roads, 
the Rue de Rome, by the curious expedient of fitting up con- 
crete brackets, and running the road on these supports. Via- 
ducts and bridges have to be thrown across ravines, waterways 
must be bridged, morasses crossed, and the whole work must 
be done so that the gradient on the road is maintained at a 
moderate pitch, so that distances are not unduly drawn out, 
and that the needs of the community are adequately served. 
Curiously enough, it is to military science, above all 
other considerations, that we owe our great roads. It was 
war that inspired the Romans to ensure rapid means of 
communication ; it is, above aU, for purposes of war that we 
have driven roads to the outlying frontiers of India. That 
war brings horrors in its train is a fact beyond question. 
When we try to enumerate the advantages it also entails it 
would be weU for us to remember that we owe to it the 
excellence, nay the very existence, of many of our roads. 



' CHAPTER VII 

TOWN PLANNING — THE CHOICE OF BYZANTIUM — THE DESIGN 

OF Australia's capital 

Town planning is one of the oldest arts, and, like most of 
the old arts, its origin is lost to us. It can be traced back 
to the Greeks, for it is possible to draw a most interesting 
map of the shores of the Mediterranean showing how the 
various great cities of Greece would send colonies out all 
over the land under their separate leaders, to some suitable 
site, where their city would be built. You must all remember 
how the colony of Byzantium was founded, with the story 
of how the oracle said that the founder should take his 
men with him and search the land until he came to a city 
of the blind. One cannot help feeling that the leader had 
instructions rather more definite than these to go upon, 
and that it was under wise direction that, on reaching 
Byzantium, he selected its site, saying that this must be 
the place of which the god had spoken, for the men who 
had built a city opposite must surely have been blind in 
not seeing the superiority of the site of Byzantium to their 
own. 

The finest account of town planning is unquestionably 
that given by Virgil of the building of Carthage in the 
"iEneid," and, reading between the lines, there is no great 
difficulty in seeing that great care was taken in the order- 
ing of the city as a whole, and when you come to think 



Town Planning loi 

of it, it is natural enough that Virgil, as a Roman, should 
have been struck with the idea, for in their numerous 
campaigns the Romans were always at work on town- 
planning, their nightly camp being constructed to a most 
elaborate regular scale. | 

In the ordinary course, however, towns have rather 
grown than been planned, and in London especially we 
see the nuisance that has been caused to us by the haphazard 
way in which our ancestors did their building. Now, at 
large expense, we are forced to take on street widening 
schemes, and if you go down Fleet Street at present you 
will see many of the shops boarded up and in course of 
reconstruction, so that they can be set back a few feet 
to provide more room for the incessant volume of traffic 
running east and west. The imagination is staggered when 
you come to think of the cost of the whole Kingsway 
improvement. It is only a few years now since the site of 
Kingsway was covered with a dense network of streets, 
where the houses had grown up according to the caprice 
of the builders. The London County Council, realising the 
need of a great artery to join north and south, have had 
a very expensive job of it in providing the site of what 
is now one of the finest thoroughfares in London. 

We and the world at large have learnt our lesson, and 
the architects and engineers have found a new field for 
their activities in scientific town planning. Just think 
what a wasteful thing it is to have a vast factory set up 
on an expensive town site ! The manufactured article has 
to bear the cost of the heavy rents and rates charged for 
the site ; the workmen, too, have to be paid a high wage, 
of which they do not get the advantage, because in their 



102 All About Engineering 

turn they must pay high rents for their houses, and big 
prices for their food and other necessaries, to pay for the 
rent of the shopkeepers, and so the whole thing goes on in 
a vicious circle. The children, again, are deprived of their 
rightful heritage of light and air. It is reasons of this sort 
that have led to such town-planning schemes as the Garden 
City of Letchworth, where whole industries have migrated 
out into the country, and where all the people can live in 
conditions of decency and comfort. The whole thing has 
been made possible through the engineer, partly because 
he has given us the chance of cheap transit through the 
railways, and partly because of the facilities of cheap power 
that we now enjoy. With the growth in electric energy, 
the future of garden cities is a rosy one, and it is a matter 
for satisfaction that machinery, the factor above all others 
that helped to force our people into the larger towns, should 
now be the factor that makes it possible for them to escape 
again back into the country. 

It is rather, however, of town planning on a more com- 
prehensive scale that I want to write. It is ancient history 
now that the capital city of Washington in the United 
States was definitely planned ; only last Christmas we 
were reading of the transference of the central government 
of India to Delhi, where the architects and the engineers 
had to plan a new town in India's historic capital, and now, 
just as I was preparing to write this chapter, the news 
has come through of the laying of the first stone of the 
commencement column of the federal capital of Australia. 

The laying of the stone is one of the landmarks in the 
history of a great country that is marching on in a steady 
stride to become one of the mightiest nations of the 



Town Planning 103 

world, and, appreciating the importance of this event in 
imperial development, Mr. Borden, the Premier of Canada, 
cabled to Mr. Fisher, the Australian Premier, on behalf of 
the Government and people of Canada, tendering his 
warmest congratulations on the foundation of the Federal 
capital, and his earnest wishes for the continued and in- 
creasing development and prosperity of the great sister 
Commonwealth. " Though far removed," says Mr. Borden's 
message, " as miles are measured, we are very close to you 
in the ideals and aspirations of democracy, and in the 
common tie which binds the two kindred nations in a firm 
allegiance to our great Empire." 

; The laying of the stone was carried out under most 
auspicious conditions on the morning of March 12th, in 
the presence of Lord Denman, the Governor-General, and 
Lady Denman. The first stone of the commencement 
column of the projected city was laid by Lord Denman, the 
second by Mr. Fisher, the Prime Minister, and the third 
by Mr. King O'Malley, the Minister for Home Affairs. 
The name selected for the capital was kept secret until 
Lady Denman drew it from a casket, and said : " I name 
the capital of AustraUa ' Canberra.' " The announcement 
evoked a storm of applause, as there had been much con- 
troversy over the suggested name Myola and other proposals. 
The whole history of the planning of this federal city is 
of interest, for the architects of the world were invited 
to submit their plans to the Australian Government for it. 
By an unfortunate disagreement as to the terms of the 
competition, the proposal was frowned on by the archi- 
tectural authorities in this country, and it is curious to 
note that the winner of the prize, Mr. W. B. Griffin, a 



104 All About Engineering 

35-year-old native of Chicago, did not hear of the offer 
made until five months after the event. He only had two 
months on his plans, and all his raw material was the 
virgin site, a mountain plateau, of an area of 900 square 
miles, in the Yass-Canberra district of New South Wales, 
l5dng in a triangle formed by three mountains. 

The site of the city itself has an area of 25 square miles, 
and is to be built for a population of 75,000, with facilities 
provided for an indefinite increase in population, while the 
three mountain peaks in the district will form a magni- 
ficent background to the city itself. 

Mr. Griffin's design, which, of course^ had to take into 
consideration all the special conditions of the site, is very 
ingenious. It consists of three centres for the inner city, 
and of five for the outer. In the inner portion there are 
to be Government, municipal and mercantile centres, from 
which boulevards will radiate, while the outljdng district 
will contain three agricultural centres, a manufacturing 
centre, and a suburban centre. 

A great effort has been made to ensure that the noise of 
the city shall be kept away from the residential quarters. 
The houses built on the streets lying between the great 
radial centres are to enjoy quiet and secluded park-hke 
atmosphere, and at the same time will never be further 
removed from the main business thoroughfares and the 
lines of local transportation than four blocks. The city is 
only to have a single railway through it, and all the freight 
yards, freight depots, transfer faciHties and warehouses are 
to be placed outside the city limit. 

It is one of the architect's principles that the railroads 
entering large cities mar their beauty, and are often flanked 



Town Planning 105 

by poor districts. In the City of Canberra, Mr. Griffin 
believes that the railway will actually beautify the city, 
and it has been so arranged that it wiU run semi-circularly 
round the business centres without cutting the main busi- 
ness streets anjrwhere. 

There is one other aspect of the city that demands our 
attention. It is proposed that the material of which it is 
to be constructed shall be reinforced concrete, on the 
ground stated by Mr. Griffin, that it is the " newest, cheapest, 
most plastic and variable single medium yet introduced 
into construction." In a later chapter we shall see the 
variety of uses to which reinforced concrete can be put. 
That it is the substance favoured for the capital city 
of Australia is an indication of the way in which it has 
sprung into general favour, and will go far to increase the 
popularity of concrete as a building material all over the 
world. 

Town planning is, in its latest aspects, a modern develop- 
ment of engineering. In it, the engineer — for the architect, 
after all, is an engineer — has offered him fine scope for 
the display of artistic talent, and it may be that as a result 
of people living in artistic surroundings a check will be 
placed on the spirit of materialism, and that the engineer 
wiU have an important part to play in this connection, 
too, as a factor in the humanisation of the race of man. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LONDON — ITS WATER SUPPLY, ITS SEWERS, AND ELECTRIC 

SERVICE 

London, with its population of 7,000,000, presents to the 
engineer a variety of problems that is, I should imagine, 
unequalled in any area of similar size throughout the 
world. I have had to refer to it in the chapter on town 
planning. We can see in the chapter on the work of a great 
contractor that a London job — the construction of one 
of the great sewers — is numbered among his mightiest 
undertakings, and, in fact, you will find references, to the 
metropolis of the Empire scattered throughout the book. 
No wonder either when you start to think rightly of 
London. Look at the great railways running into it on 
norths south, east, and west, at the bridges that span the 
restless waters of the Thames ; at its great wharves, its 
network of tubes and tramways, the traffic of its streets, 
the power required to warm and light its houses, its shops 
and its places of amusement, its big factories, and the 
vast buildings that it requires to enable it to realise the 
proud position of being the mart of the world. To describe 
the engineering work of London would take up a whole 
volume, and even then there would be other volumes left 
to be written. I propose, therefore, only to touch on one 
or two aspects of the problem, and, as a start, to 
say something of the great waterworks at Chingford 

106 



London 107 

that were formally opened in March of this year by the 
King. 

With the felicity of expression that has long been recog- 
nised as an attribute of the Royal Family, the King when 
he went down in State to Chingford to open the new 
waterworks that have been constructed replied to the 
address presented by the Metropolitan Water Board as 
follows : — 

" The Queen and I are very glad to be present to-day 
to inaugurate the Chingford reservoir, and to witness the 
completion of this part of your enterprise. It is interesting 
to recall the association of my ancestor with the incep- 
tion of London's water supply when the New River was 
formed to carry the springs of the River Lea to the heart 
of the City. The accomplishment of this arduous task, 
in the year 1613, was largely due to a distinguished Welsh- 
man, Sir Hugh Myddelton, whose dauntless nature over- 
came unending difficulties and opposition ; and the first 
official act of his brother, Sir Thomas Myddelton, who was 
elected Lord Mayor of London the same year, was to per- 
form a ceremony such as I have undertaken to-day. 

" The citizens of London will do well to remember that 
after three centuries they still owe a debt of gratitude to 
the Lea for the remarkable purity of their water supply. 
Since the days of King James the First the problem has 
become immeasurably greater with the constant widening 
of London's boundaries and the vast increase of her popu- 
lation. The large sums which the Metropolitan Water 
Board have found it necessary to spend in new works bear 
witness to the magnitude of their task, and it is easy to 
realise the heavy burden which falls on those responsible 



io8 All About Engineering 

for the policy and administration of such great under- 
takings. 

" You are justly proud of this reservoir, which is a 
splendid monument to the energy of your officers, the skill 
of your engineers, and the industry of your workmen. We 
congratulate you warmly on the success of your labours, 
and we shall ever follow with interest the continued progress 
of this important undertaking, so vital to the health and 
well-being of my Empire." 

As soon as he had ceased speaking, the King went to 
a table at the front of the stand, and, pressing a small gold 
switch there, started an electric current, which set the 
pumping machinery going. At the same time he used 
these words : " I declare this reservoir open, and name it 
King George's Reservoir." Immediately afterwards, one of 
the five great iron mouths at the top of the cascade steps 
belched forth a flood of water, and a minute or two later 
the others were doing the same, producing a foaming, 
tumultuous cataract, which the Royal visitors, and, indeed, 
everybody else, watched with intense interest for a con- 
siderable time. 

In the address of the Water Board presented to the 
King it was pointed out that in the furtherance of the 
purpose of meeting the ever-increasing demands of the 
metropolis, and parts adjacent, for the copious supply of 
pure and wholesome water, the Board had expended on 
new works at Chingford and elsewhere a sum approaching 
to £3,000,000 since they assumed the control of the water 
undertaking in the year 1904, and additional works, involv- 
ing a further cost of ;£i,6oo,ooo, would shortly be com- 
menced in the valley of the Thames. It is difficult from 




:ymMitmmmtie^ /■ ^ 



London 109 

figures to get any idea of the magnitude of this and other 
undertakings which the Water Board have carried through. 
Since the date when the first sod was cut, on April ii, 
1908, the work for the reservoir proceeded apace. No 
fewer than i,ooo acres of land were acquired, of which 
416 acres are occupied by the water-area. The reservoir 
has an embankment 4I miles long, formed from the material 
excavated from the reservoir, and containing more than 
2,000,000 cubic yards of earthwork and 250,000 cubic 
yards of puddle. So vast are the forces dealt with, that it 
has been partly divided by a breakwater, in order that in 
stormy weather the waves may not rise to destructive pro- 
portions. The reservoir itself has the tremendous capacity 
of 3,000,000,000 gallons, and the supply is derived from 
the River Lea and the Lea Navigation. The water is taken 
up by five huge pumps when the river is in a state of high 
flow and as soon as the turbid flood-water has run to 
waste, and stored away. In ordinary circumstances one 
pump only wiU be brought into use. The pumping machinery, 
all told, is capable of lifting more than 200,000,000 gallons 
per day. The pumps are of a new type as regards London 
waterworks. Each one is really an explosion chamber, 
working on the internal combustion principle, and blowing, 
not pumping, the water into a tower, whence it passes into 
the reservoir. It may be added that to accompUsh this 
work, it has also been necessary to divert the course of the 
River Lea for a distance of 3 miles, and to construct a 
new channel 55 feet wide. For the moment the new 
reservoir ensures to London what has been aptly described 
as the " Hfe blood of the City " — an astonishing feat, when 
one remembers that the Water Board have to meet the 



no All About Engineering 

needs of more than 7,000,000 people to-day, each of whom 
requires 32 gallons per day (36 gallons in summer), or 
a barrel of water per head for every man, woman, and 
child. Not less than 90,000,000,000 gallons of water v/ere 
distributed in the year 1911-12. But what of the future ? 
Neither the Thames nor the Lea is inexhaustible, and 
although the former river will be used to greater advantage 
when additional reservoirs are at work, by taking in its 
flood waters, there may come a day when London has to 
find another gathering ground to meet her insatiable needs. 
More than once the question of Welsh water for London 
has been raised, and even with the magnificent resources 
made available by the Chingford reservoir, it may be 
expedient, before many years are gone, to cast the eye 
abroad in order that the old lesson of history may not be 
repeated — and London find itself again growing faster than 
its supply of water. 

I have already pointed out, you may remember, that 
the pumps for the Chingford reservoir — ^they are Humphrey 
pumps, by the way — are of peculiar type. As to their 
working, we have in the photograph a sufficient indi- 
cation for us to be content with the short description 1 
have given of them. The story of their construction, how- 
ever, illustrates that the engineer must always be prepared 
to back his opinion. When Mr. Humphrey was first 
approached by the London County Council, he had only 
built one of them with the relatively slight strength of 
35 horse-power. He at once promised to jump from this 
to between 200 and 300 horse-power. The Water Board 
took him at his word, and gave him their contract for the 
work, but before doing so they insisted on his backing his 



London iii 

opinion to the extent of £20,000, an amount that he was 
to forfeit if his pumps proved unsuccessful. Events have 
shown that the inventor was justified in his self-confidence, 
for the large pumps when completed behaved exactly 
according to the prophecies he had made, and they are 
now being sent to pump water throughout the different 
countries of the world. 

At the time of the opening of the new reservoir, the 
Morning Post published a most interesting sketch, illus- 
trating the point that London has continually been in 
danger of outstripping its water supply, and the article 
shows this aspect of London engineering so clearly that, 
with the permission of the editor, I am quoting it as it 
stands : 

" Water-supply and development," the writer said, 
" have gone hand in hand through the centuries. For a 
time London folk were content to use the water of the 
Thames — which was more ' silvery ' than we can ever 
hope to see it again — to rely on streams, such as the 
Holbourne, the Tyburn, or the Walbrook, or to sink shallow 
wells in the porous subsoil, notwithstanding that the water 
from the last, clear and sparkling as it might appear, was 
sometimes a source of the worst form of contamination. 
Our forefathers held in great esteem the pump by the 
churchyard wall of St. Giles-in-the-Fields until the water 
became infected and cholera ravaged the immediate neigh- 
bourhood. The growth of London was, in fact, restricted 
to the areas possessing water-bearing strata, and it was not 
until conduits brought water from a distance that the 
clay districts of Camden Town, Kentish Town, and the 
like supported a population. The first of these conduits 



112 All About Engineering 

began its course at Tyburn, and by 1238 no fewer than 
nine pipe-lines had been laid from this brook to the City. 
The old wooden pipes were formed of tree-stems drilled 
through the centre and cut into lengths of 6 feet, and 
within living memory some of these reUcs have been dug 
up in Piccadilly. Many conduits were set up in various 
thoroughfares, and one of the most famous was that of 
Chepe, which was not always devoted to the distribution 
of water. ' This year, 1273-4,' says the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, ' came King Edward I. and his wife from the 
Holy Land, and were crowned at Westminster on the 
Sunday next after the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady ; 
and the Conduit in Chepe ran all the day with red and 
white wine to drink for all such as wished.' Many wished. 
Another famous conduit, one of many, was the Tunne of 
Cornhill, ' a cesturne for sweete water,' as Stow tells us, 
' conveyed by pipes of leade from Tiborne,' and occupying 
the site of an old house of correction where night walkers 
had been kept in durance. The conduit at Holborn Circus 
was reconstructed in 1577 by Mr. William Lamb, who 
gave his name to ' Lamb's Conduit Fields ' of two centuries 
ago, and the Lamb's Conduit Street of the present day. 
But although many people drew their water from the 
standards at their door or the public fountains, there still 
remained plenty of work for the ' tankard bearers,' or 
' cobs/ who conveyed the liquid from door to door in a 
cone-shaped barrel, holding about 3 gallons, which was 
carried on the shoulder. 

" But in those old days, as now, London was growing 
faster than its water supply, and in 158 1, a Dutchman 
named Peter Moryce obtained from the Lord Mayor a 



London 113 

lease for a term of 500 years, at an annual rental of los., 
authorising him to erect a pumping-engine within the 
first arch of London Bridge. This ' artificial forcier/ as 
Stow calls it, was the marvel of the age. By its means, and 
that of machinery erected in the second arch of London 
Bridge, Thames water was conveyed ' in pipes of leade 
over the steeple of St. Magnus Church, at the north end 
of London Bridge, and thence into diverse men's houses 
in Thames Streete, New Fish Streete, and Grasse Streete, 
up to the north-west corner of Leadenhall, the highest 
ground of all the citie, when the waste of the maine pipe 
rising into this standarde (provided at the charges of the 
citie) with four spoutes, did at every tyde runne (according 
to covenant) foure wayes, plentifully serving to the com- 
modity of the inhabitants near adjoining in their houses, 
and also cleansed the chanels of the streete towarde Bishops- 
gate, Aldgate, the bridge, and Stocks market.' The water- 
works remained in the hands of the Moryce family until 
1703, when they were sold for £38,000 to a number of 
citizens, who formed a company, and obtained a lease 
of the existing conduits for ;^7oo a year. It was not until 
1822 that the company was dissolved. 

" Long before that day, however — in 1609, to wit — Hugh 
Myddelton had appeared. London, with a population of 
over 150,000, was at its wit's end for water, and the bold 
and adventurous Welsh goldsmith embarked, almost single- 
handed, on the now famous New River scheme for bringing 
water to the northern parts of London from the springs 
of Chadwell and Amwell, and other districts of Hertford- 
shire, by a route 38 miles long. ' The dauntless Welsh- 
man stept forth and smote the rock, and the water flowed 
I 



114 All About Engineering 

into the thirsting MetropoHs.* But not until he had fought 
down an army of opposition — landowners on the line of 
route, powerful interests, and the prejudice which, as 
Goethe said at a later date, resists everything that happens 
to be new, ' and thus a new truth may wait a long time 
before it can make its way.' Myddelton had sunk his own 
fortune, and failure was threatening, when he found a 
friend in King James I., who in this respect was wiser 
than he knew, and gave the engineer his hearty support, 
the condition being that his Majesty should pay half the 
cost of the work, and receive a portion of the profits. 
Michaelmas Day, 1613, saw the huge undertaking com- 
pleted, and the New River opened at its ' head,' in Islington, 
with all the pomp befitting the occasion. Three score 
labourers, carrjdng symbols of their work, marched round 
to the tune of the drum, and then stood at attention while 
the ' speech ' by Thomas Myddelton was pronounced : 

*Long have we labour' d, long desir'd and praid 
For this great worke's perfection, and by th' aide 
Of Heaven and good men's wishes, 'tis at length 
Happily conquer'd by cost, art and strength ; 
And after five yeares deere expense in dayes, 
Travaile and paines, besides th' infinite wayes. 
Of malice, envy, false suggestions. 
Able to daunt the spirits of mighty ones 
In wealth and courage, this, a worke so rare, 
Onely by one man's industry, cost, and care. 
Is brought to blest effect, so much withstood. 
His onely aime, the cittie's generall good.' 

" At the conclusion of the speech — there was much 
more than this — ' the flood-gate opens, trumpets giving it 




u 



London 115 

triumphant welcomes, and for the close of their honour- 
able entertainment a peale of chambers.' " 

The later history of the New River is an old story now 
— how the citizens, accustomed to get water for nothing, 
objected to use the New River supply, and were compelled 
to do so by measures which checked free competition ; 
how twenty years elapsed from the day of opening before 
any dividend was paid ; how prosperity increased, until 
by the middle of the nineteenth century the dividend was 
at the rate of £850 per share, and an undivided Adventurer's 
share was sold in open market for as much as ^^94,900 ; 
how other water companies were established, and yet, in 
spite of their miles of mains, no fewer than 80,000 houses, 
containing 640,000 inhabitants, in London were unsupplied 
by water in 1850 ; and how, less than ten years ago, the 
whole of the water supply of London passed into the hands 
of the Metropolitan Water Board, at a cost of a little under 
£40,000,000. 

Great as is the problem of the water supply of London, 
that of arranging for its efficient drainage is as great or 
even greater. When you pull up the waste pipe of your 
bath in the morning, you hardly realise that the water you 
have then used has to be carried away 15 miles or more 
underground before it can be delivered into the river 
Thames, to be taken away to sea by the channel provided 
by the arch-engineer of all — Nature. I have now before 
me the report on the main drainage of London that was 
submitted to the London County Council last year by Sir 
Maurice Fitzmaurice, the chief engineer to the Council. 
In the old days, as he points out, the sewers were mere 
trenches, either making, use of, or being designed to take 



ii6 All About Engineering 

the place of, the natural streams and ditches. It was not 
until 1732 that the River Fleet, which at one time was a 
navigable stream, was covered in and by Act of Parlia- 
ment formed into a sewer below Holborn. In the early 
days the great London drains were devised merely to 
carry off the surface water ; but with the abolition of the 
cesspool they have had both to deal with this and also 
to carry off much of the mud from the streets and the 
various material that the ordinary house drains are required 
to accommodate. Briefly, the system may be summarised 
as consisting of allowing the sewage to run down in vast 
main drains — constructed for the most part, as my illustra- 
tion shows, on the principle of the London Tube tunnels, 
as far as possible by the force of gravity to the great pump- 
ing stations that lie on the banks of the Thames to the 
east of London. There it is treated chemically, so far as 
is possible to precipitate all solid matter, and as a result 
of the action of the huge pumps employed, the water is 
enabled to flow into the River Thames by the action of 
gravity at Barking and at Crossness. The sludge, as the 
precipitated matter is called, is loaded into special steamers 
and carried out far down the Thames estuary to Black 
Deep, where it is deposited over an area of 8 or 10 miles. 
These sludge steamers are peculiarly constructed, so that 
the bottoms of their great tanks can be opened while they 
are at sea and the sludge dropped from them, the heavy 
mechanical work that would otherwise be necessary being 
thereby avoided. The quantity of sewage that is disposed 
of in this way amounts to between 8,000 and 9,000 tons 
a week. 

We are apt to think that it is our generation that has 




u 



London 117 

hit on the brilliant idea of utilising this vast quantity of 
sewage, but, as Sir Maurice Fitzmaurice shows, the idea 
was very much more prevalent fifty years ago. The view 
generally held now is that such schemes are impracticable 
except where there are considerable quantities of suitable 
commercial material admixed, as, for instance, at Bradford, 
where the sewage, owing to the woolcombing industry, is 
very largely charged with grease. To show that plenty of 
thought has been expended on the problem, I may mention 
the scheme, to which Parliamentary sanction was given 
in the Metropolis Sewage and Essex Reclamation Act, 
whereby it was intended to reclaim the great tracts of low- 
l57ing sand, known as the Foulness sand, and to utilise the 
sewage for purposes of fertilisation. The works were actually 
commenced, but the prospects were not sufficiently encou- 
raging to attract investors, and the undertaking was aban- 
doned, the £25,000 deposited with the London Board, as 
security that the works should be completed, being the only 
money the ratepayers of London have ever received in 
respect of their sewage. Another scheme was to pump the 
sewage and sell it as agricultural manure to the farmers in 
Essex. An experiment was carried out at Crossness by 
the Native Guano Company, but led to nothing. 

Even now proposals are still put forward for utilising 
the London sewage. One suggestion was that of an inventor, 
gifted perhaps with less knowledge but more imagination 
than his fellows, who proposed to supply the United King- 
dom with alcohol from London sewage. Many curious 
proposals for making use of London sewage have been 
put forward from time to time by the large army of 
inventors, but no proposal has ever got beyond the pre- 



ii8 AH About Engineering 

liminary stage. Several enthusiasts on the subject of the 
useful utilisation of London sewage have begged for sample 
gallons of it at the outfalls, and one even took away a 
barrelful, but nothing has ever been heard again from 
any of them, and the amount of sewage which they have 
taken away has made no appreciable diminution in the 
322,000,000 gallons a day, which are still at the disposal 
of anyone who will take it in whole or part. Up to now 
the valuable matter, whether alcohol or other material, 
in large quantities of domestic sewage, where no trade 
effluents are taken in to any large extent, is very similar 
to the gold which exists in all sea water, but which, un- 
fortunately, costs more to extract than it is worth. 

At the present time, owing to the diminution in the 
number of horses in large towns, it is becoming increasingly 
difficult to get manure for market gardens ; and as this 
difficulty becomes accentuated, the time may arrive when it 
will be worth while to consider the manufacture of fertilis- 
ing material from the London sewage. 

A few figures, in conclusion, to show the extent of these 
operations of the London County Council. The total dis- 
charging capacity of the outfalls and storm water pumping 
stations on both sides of the river for 24 hours is 2,121,000,000 
gallons. The net capital expenditure on the main drainage 
works by the Metropolitan Board of Works was £6,824,377, 
while since the Council came into office in 1889 up to the 
31st March, 1913, there has been a further expenditure of 
£5.369,477, or the enormous total of £12,194,354, or nearly 
one-half of a year's cost of the maintenance of the British 
army. The following table shows the quantities of crude 
sewage treated, the chemicals used in precipitating the 



London 



119 



sludge sent out to sea, and the quantities of refuse inter- 
cepted at the gratings at each of the outfall works at Barking 
and Crossness during the year igii-12 : 





Barking 


Crossness 






Galls. 


Galls. 


Total galls. 


Sewage treated . . 


65.558,363.000 


52,482,313,000 


118,040,676,000 


Daily average . . 


179,121,210 


143,394.298 


322,515,508 




Tons 


Tows 


Tons 


Lime used 


12,509 


10.878 


23,387 


Proto-sulphate of 








iron used 


2.777 


2.556 


5.333 


Sludge produced 








and sent to sea 


1,711,500 


885,500 


2,597,000 


Weekly average 


32,913 


17,029 


49,942 


Refuse intercept'd 








at screens 


3.471 


2,878 


6,349 


Number of trips 








made by the 








steamers 


1,712 


885 


2.597 



A good and abundant water supply and an efficient 
system of drainage are the first essentials for the pros- 
perity of a city, and third in importance to these in such a 
climate as ours comes a satisfactory provision of light and 
heat. As an illustration of what London does in this con- 
nection, I want to take the Charing Cross, West End and 
City Electricity Supply Company, for it has to carry on 
its work under peculiar conditions of difficulty. Just con- 
sider the demands made upon it. In the daytime, when 
the City offices are working at full pressure, lighting and 
heating appliances are making insistent demands for a 
full and steady supply of electric current ; but by six, the 
offices with rare exceptions are closed down, lights are 
extinguished, and heaters turned off, and the City, from 



120 AH About Engineering 

the point of view of the Electrical Supply Company, as 
from the point of view of the policeman on his beat, becomes 
almost a city of the dead. But what of the West End 
consumer ? Just when the needs of the City begin to fall 
off, the West End begins to make its fullest demand for 
light and power. The wants of the men returning from 
work have to be met ; the sky-signs come out in a blaze of 
incessantly changing colour ; the theatres and the restaurants 
add in no slight degree to the drain of power from the 
supply company ; and, lastly, when the rest of the world 
is comfortably abed, the machine rooms of the newspapers 
close their heavy switches, and a great gush of current has 
to surge across the wires to give life to that most marvel- 
lous of mechanisms, the printing machine. No man, I 
think, can stand by a printing machine as a paper is going 
to press without paying his silent tribute to the wonderful 
adaptability of electric power as he sees it in the printing 
machine. They are getting ready for printing. Most of 
the cylinders are securely locked on the machine, and the 
engineer wants one of the wheels to make a quarter turn. 
Just suppose a carter with a team of sixteen carthorses 
trying to get them to move a heavy load just a quarter 
of the turn of the wheel. He would need to use clumsy 
scotches and brakes, and have his team in a ferment of 
indignation. In the machine-room, however, the engineer 
calls on the power station for just the amount of energy 
he requires, and he gets it delivered him on the instant. 
And later, when all is set and ready, and the machines 
start with a roar, devouring their nightly meal of paper, 
pouring it out in a foaming cataract of completed journals, 
think how the current must stream across the wires to 




Photo: h. iMil?ie?, U aiui^-wurcfi 



THE TURBINE ROOM 




Photo: E. Mihier, Wandsworck 



THE BOILER HOUSE 
A GENERATING STATION OF THE LONDON ELECTRIC RAILWAY 



London 121 

keep up the supply of furious energy that the work 
demands. 

It is these and half a hundred other miscellaneous needs 
that the electrical supply companies of London find them- 
selves obliged to cater for. Let us go down to Bow, the 
head-quarters of the Company, where they take the coal 
and absorb what they can of its energy so as to supply it 
in the handiest of all possible forms to the consumer. The 
huge chimneys of the building are the first things that 
strike the imagination ; and they need to be big, too, to 
cope with the gases of the great furnaces beneath. In the 
building below there are three mighty boilers. Their fire 
grates have each an area of 336 square feet, and the heating 
surface of each reaches the enormous area of 22,000 square 
feet. It is no use stoking all these monster engines by hand. 
It would be rather like having the armies of Liliput 
hard at work pouring food and drink into the throat of a 
Gulliver ; and so it is by their own mechanism that two 
of them draw in the coal that they require. The work 
they do is proportional to their appetite. It would be 
an easy matter for each of these giants to evaporate 
100,000 lbs, of water in an hour. And beside these are a 
whole school of other boilers of lesser capacity steadily 
transferring the energy of the coal into steam pressure 
that the steam may change it to electricity. And the coal 
is brought them, broken exactly to their needs, both by rail 
and by water. 

You get a wonderful impression of power by looking 
at the vast engine-room. The steam comes up to it in 
monster pipes, each of the pipes delivering its supply at 
a pressure of 170 lbs. to the square inch, and the engines 



122 All About Engineering 

maintaining a steady vacuum of 26 inches in their condensers. 
They have special cooHng towers to take the heat from 
the condensing water, and the fall in temperature from 
the top of these towers to the base is kept at a steady 
difference of 32° F. Coupled to the ever-turning, ever- 
humming fi5rwheels of these mighty engines are the huge 
current generators. In looking at them you get the same 
feeling of relentless, insuperable power that you get in 
looking at the turbines of a mammoth liner. You see a 
little blue flame as the brushes spark, you hear a steady 
hum, and you know that in the world outside men are 
dependent on these wheels being kept incessantly turning 
for their bread-getting and for their amusements. With 
the old marine engines you could have a feeling of sym- 
pathy. It did not need much imagination to see them 
corresponding with a team of struggling horses, but with 
the turbine and the dynamo we feel in a mysterious way 
that we are watching the super-machine — a machine that 
has thrown aside all kinship with the animal world. 



CHAPTER IX 

CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION — A VISIT TO THE NEW STATIONERY 
STORES — ^A SKYSCRAPER — THE NATURE AND USES OF 
CONCRETE 

For several months past now there has been a building in 
London in the course of construction that has excited the 
public interest. For my own part, I remember one after- 
noon some months ago, as I was walking along the Thames 
Embankment with an architect, that he drew my attention 
to it, pointing out to me that it was of particular interest 
because it was being built in the way they build a ship. 
We looked across the river, and all that we could see of 
the work was the lofty steelwork of the gantry cranes, 
appearing in the distant sunlight like those imaginative 
pictures of machinery that are drawn to illustrate the 
books of Jules Verne and Mr, H. G. Wells. When the time 
came for me to have to write a chapter on the methods 
of using reinforced concrete I thought of this building, 
which is to be the new Stationery Office and Office of 
Works Stores, and which is being put up on the Hennebique 
system of reinforced concrete. The Office of Works having 
kindly given me permission to go over it, I went there early 
one Saturday morning, and in an hour's tour of the un- 
finished building I learnt more about concrete construc- 
tion than I could have done by hours of reading. 

How London owes its very existence to the Thames ! 

123 



124 All About Engineering 

Here is a building covering an area of some eighty-five 
square feet, destined eventually to have seven floors, and 
almost the whole of the vast weight of building material 
has been brought up to it by the Thames. Further, the 
building itself has been built almost completely out of 
material that has at one time formed the bed of the river. 
You can't help thinking of this as you stand by one of 
the big concrete mixers. 

It is a great drum-shaped metal vessel, driven round 
rapidly on its axis by electricity, and lying in piles beside 
it are the materials on which it feeds. There is what the 
Clerk of the Works describes as ballast, gravel that has 
been scooped from the river-bed and washed perfectly 
clean ; then there is the gritty sand, also washed perfectly 
clean ; and, lastly, the cement, dug from the Thames Valley 
near Gravesend, burnt in the great mills there that form 
no small factor in giving us the London fog, and brought 
up to just opposite the building in barges by the tides of 
the river. The mixer takes 4 feet of ballast, all of which 
has passed through a sieve with a |-inch mesh, 3 feet of 
sand, and i cwt. of cement, and water, and it churns 
the mixture together into a paste, and then disgorges the 
lot into a great bucket that is carried by the cranes to 
just where the workmen require it. 

When I went over the building the basement had 
been completed for months. The building stands on a 
forest of pillars, and in the basement they are at their 
thickest. The columns there are 22 inches square, and 
as they run up to the top story of the building they 
get thinner and thinner, being at the end only 10 inches 
square. It was while I was looking at these pillars that 



Concrete Construction 125 

the Clerk of the Works gave me a few figures as to the 
forces that this concrete building has to support. " The 
floor above us," he said to me, " is just 3| inches thick, 
and it has to be ready to support a weight of 3 cwt. 
to the square foot. The whole weight of the building, 
not only that of the floor above, has to be carried by 
these pillars, and as the foundations must not bear 
more than a load of 3 tons to the square foot, the 
pillars rest on large octagonal plates of concrete built on 
the soHd foundation beneath our feet. You will notice," 
he went on, as we looked up at the ceiling, " how the con- 
crete has the appearance of wooden beams. We shall see 
the meaning of that better later on, but all this concrete, 
pillars and beams and flooring has to be built in wooden 
moulds, and when the concrete has had time to set the 
wooden supports are knocked away and the concrete is 
strong enough to support itself, and the load of the build- 
ing above it." 

Apart from the interest of such a building as this, it is 
worth while being up at the top of it early in the morning 
on a fine day, such as I was lucky enough to strike. From 
the top floor you can get the whole idea of the building 
and the way it is being put together. The first thing that 
holds the attention is the sight of the gantry cranes at 
work. It is like looking at the skeleton of a megatherium, 
and one can imagine a line of evolution where such monster 
beasts had decided to get rid of muscles and blood, and 
to build their bodies of bare bones. The cranes dominate 
the building. In a later chapter we shall see that 
they are, in fact, a developed form of the transporter 
bridge. Each crane reaUy consists of a wide-gauge pair 



126 All About Engineering 

of rails, but whereas the gauge of a railway is measured in 
feet, the gauge of the cranes must be measured in several 
tens of yards. On these rails which traverse the space above 
the building from end to end the traveller runs, going 
462 feet a minute with a load of 30 cwL, taking the place 
of the engine and the train, and, lastly, slung so as to 
run to and fro along the traveller, corresponding to the 
direction of the axle trees of the carriages, is the crab — 
so called as it only moves sideways — ^through which the 
materials are both moved to and fro along the traveller 
and are also raised or lowered. The whole is directed by 
a man sitting in a little cabin below the traveller, with 
three levers, one for each of the operations the crane is 
called on to perform. 

You will have learnt in geometry that the position of 
a point is determined by the intersection of two straight 
lines, and the man in charge of the gantry crane spends 
his life in the application of this principle. I think it is 
worth while for us to have this made clear in a diagram, 
as, though the working of the crane is easy enough to under- 
stand when you see it in use, it may not be so clear from 
a description. A b c d is the rectangular piece of ground 
over which the crane works. 

The traveller is a great carriage the width of a c, and 
able to travel in the direction a b or c d, or vice versa, 
while the crab runs in the direction a to c, or b to d, or 
vice versa. Let us suppose the crab is at a, and the carriage 
lying along a c, and there is a bucket of cement on the 
ground at p which is wanted by the builders on the top 
floor at Q. What the crane man does is to run the carriage 
or traveller from A c to a' c', to drive the crab from a' to p'. 



Concrete Construction 127 

and then to lower his chain from the crab and pick the 
bucket up so that it is clear of the building. The bucket 
is wanted at Q. Well, the traveller moves from a' c" to 
a" c", and then the crab from p' to q, where the bucket 
is lowered down to the builders who are waiting for it. 
As a matter of fact, the crane man, being an expert, will 
probably do both operations at once, and in consequence 
the actual paths of the bucket will be A p and p Q, instead 
of, as I have described them, a a' p and P p' Q. If you 
are a geometrician, you will see at once that the whole 
problem is one that can be stated in terms of perpendicu- 
lars to the sides of the rectangle. What is the advantage 
of the gantry crane over the ordinary one which the work- 
men describe as a Scotsman ? The point is that a Scotsman 
can only work within the radius of his beam, whereas the 
gantry, which is built over the whole building, can bring 
his chain over any desired point, and so in a building of 
reinforced concrete the workmen do not have to carry 
heavy loads across the cement while it is still " green/' 
that is, while it is only lightly set. 

We can see from the top every sort of operation being 
carried on at once. Here is a man bending the iron bars 
necessary for the reinforcement of the concrete, an easy 
enough job when you see it done, but needing its own 
special skill for it to be done with accuracy. A hundred 
yards away you can hear the circular saw buzzing its way 
through the wood, as it cuts it to the sizes the workmen 
require ; and now we are at a floor that the men are just 
laying. These are the iron rods, necessary, as you will see 
when we consider the principles of the work, to supplement 
the concrete where it is weakest, and taking up the stress 



128 All About Engineering 

of tension, and being quite light where the concrete is 
strongest in resisting compression. On this the workmen 
are spreading the concrete that has just been brought 
them in a bucket, putting their backs against the bucket 
to shove it just over the spot on which they want the con- 
crete deHvered, and then levelhng the mass with monster 
squeegees. These steel rods have had more thought ex- 
pended on them than you might imagine from looking at 
them. There will be 6,000 or 7,000 miles of them in the 
building when it is finished. Each has got to be able to 
resist a tensile strain of 27 tons to the square inch, but 
it must be so tempered that it would give way if the pull 
increased to over 32 tons, for experience has shown that as 
the steel gets above this strength, it only gains strength 
at the expense of being brittle. Then, too, each bar must 
be able to bend in its own diameter without fracturing. 
One bar at least from each consignment is tested at a 
proper testing works before the material is approved 
by the architect for use in the building. Close to 
the floor that we saw being built the workmen are 
getting a portion of the wall in place. At present it 
looks more like a trough than a wall, and as we look 
into the trough into which the concrete is being poured 
and rammed home, we notice again the iron rods for 
the reinforcement, but this time we see that they are 
specially tied together, partly so as to give resistance 
in a direction other than their length and partly to 
ensure that the building shall have what engineers describe 
as a monolithic character. It is only necessary to cross 
over what will be an office room, and we are beside a 
pillar that is running up to form a support for the floor 



Concrete Construction 129 

that is to be above where we are standing. The pillar has 
already three sides outlined in wood, but the farther side 
is as yet left open. Special care, we notice, has been taken 
to see that the four rods that run up the pillar are kept 
apart as far as their ties will allow them to go, for it is 
necessary that everything should be tight, as otherwise 
the concrete would have to bear the strain that the steel 
has been specially put in to support. At present the upper 
ties can slip up and down the steel rods, but in the part 
where the concrete has begun to be placed they are all 
kept tight, a bar of wood at first taking the strain, and 
being removed when the concrete has been rammed into 
position. 

The new Stationery Office and Stores will stretch across 
a private street, and the two parts of the building are to 
be joined together by a bridge of concrete that will itself 
have three stories. The street would have been built over, 
but the adjoining hospital has a right-of-way, and the 
bridge is to span it at such a height as to place no obstacle 
in the path even of a fire escape that may have to come 
along. 

We will pass over the staircases with just a mention, 
noting that they, too, are made of concrete, all so reinforced 
as to bear their own particular strain, and on our way out 
will glance at one of the floors that has successfully passed 
its test. For the purposes of the test, the floor was piled 
up with sacks of cement (each sack weighs 204 lbs.), and 
these were placed over the floor in layers nine sacks deep. 
The conditions of the test are that the floor of the building 
must not bend as much as the 6ooth of the span, and 
further, that when the weight is removed the floor must 
J 



130 All About Engineering 

come back accurately into position. In the present case 
the floor only gave a fifth of the amount allowed, so that 
the test was a triumphant success. 

The new office and warehouse is to be a notable build- 
ing, and the decision to have it built of reinforced concrete 
will have a great effect in stimulating the use of the material 
in England. Here are a few figures, showing some of the 
dimensions : — 

Frontage 323 feet, 189 feet, 377 feet and 

106 feet 

Average height . . . . ^^ feet 

Height from floor to floor . . 11 feet in oflice ; 10 feet 6 inches 

in warehouse (generally) 

L^^^^ Ten for goods, two for pas- 

sengers, and one for stores 
FlooY loads allowed : 

In Warehouse, Ground floor 3 cwt. per square foot 

other floors 2| cwt. 

In Oflices, all floors . . 100 lb. 

In Oflices, roofs . . . . 65 lb. 
Floor thickness . . . . 3I inches 

Boiler chimney . . . . no feet high 

In building, generally, I suppose there is no type much 
more wonderful than the New York skyscraper. It has 
been evolved, like all types of construction, even the old 
lake dweUings of Boeotia, from the special needs of the 
environment. New York is peculiarly situated. The area 
of the city is strictly Hmited, rents are very high, and 
there is incessant competition for office-room owing to the 
volume of business that continually passes through the 
city. Consequently, as it is physically impossible for the 



Concrete Construction 131 

city to extend laterally, it has had to mount skywards, 
and in the Woolworth building the enormous height of 
fifty stories is to be reached. In most cases, to save 
the cost of rent, it is necessary that the contractor should 
have the old building down and the new one ready for 
occupation within a single term. In the circumstances 
it is easy to imagine the strain that is placed upon the 
engineer responsible for the erection of this class of 
building. It is the old story of complete organisation 
being essential for the satisfactory carrying out of this 
work. Once the ground has been cleared, and the founda- 
tion laid, the new materials, all properly numbered, must 
pour in in an incessant, orderly stream, so that the work- 
men will not be kept idle a moment, but will merely have 
to fit together the new building as fast as they can fix and 
bolt its constituent parts into place. 

As yet, curiously enough, reinforced concrete has not 
entered largely into this class of building, though it is 
used extensively for the foundations ; and it is because 
of the speed of the work and its extensive character that 
it is chiefly remarkable. The building is all constructed on 
a skeleton of steel, and the first point that strikes the on- 
looker is that it is the usual custom for the engineers re- 
sponsible to start putting in the walls from the middle, and 
then building them upwards and downwards. The next 
point is the marvellous coolness of which the workmen 
engaged are masters. It is nothing for a man standing on 
a 6-inch beam with a gale blowing to catch a red-hot rivet 
that is thrown to him, or to wait with the slightest of foot- 
hold to have a heavy beam that has to be fixed in place 
passed to him. At night, the whole structure is a night- 



132 All About Engineering 

mare of steel girders with the flare lamps, enabling the 
relay gangs to continue constantly at work. The depths 
to which the engineers have to go for foundations is at 
times enormous. In the case of the Manhattan building, 
which is a good instance of the general type, they had to 
dig 120 feet down to reach a solid foundation, which is 
not such a surprising figure after all, when you remember 
that the complete building itself weighs something like 
100,000 tons, with another 20,000 to be allowed for wind 
pressure. 

An interesting feature about the skyscraper is that the 
pressure it puts on its foundation is, after all, not so enor- 
mous. The City regulations refuse to allow a greater average 
load than 15 tons to the square foot. Now this works out 
to a matter of about 230 lbs. to the square inch, so 
that you get the paradoxical fact that if a 17-stone man 
stands with one foot on a nut that is an inch square he 
is bringing a greater pressure to bear on the ground be- 
neath the nut than a skyscraper is bringing per square inch 
on to its foundations in New York. An estimate has been 
made to find out just what height of building could be 
reached without violating the building regulations on this 
point of pressure on the foundations, and it has been agreed 
that on a site 200 feet square a building might be erected 
150 stories high, reaching 2,000 feet in the air, and weigh- 
ing over 500,000 tons. 

In connection with these skyscrapers, it is interesting 
to note that an instrument has been devised to test how 
far there is any dangerous movement in the concrete beams. 
It is a measuring instrument, and the operator bores two 
minute holes and measures the distance they are apart 



Concrete Construction 133 

under different conditions with extreme accuracy, being 
able to draw the valuable conclusion as to how far the 
building is in any need of repair owing to the girders not 
taking the strains that they have been intended to bear. 
The instrument has been aptly spoken of as the clinical 
thermometer of the building, and so extremely sensitive 
is it that it has been found possible from the observations 
made with it to determine on which floor of a building a 
gang of workmen were assembled. 

Having started this chapter with the account of the 
new Government building, and having indicated the causes 
that have led to the skyscraper, we must turn back now 
to hear something of the nature and history of this ferro- 
concrete or reinforced concrete. As with road construction, 
and as with the building of the Eddystone Lighthouse, so 
with reinforced concrete, the object of the inventors has 
been to get a monolithic substance ; something, that is to 
say, that will distribute any strain that falls on a part of 
it throughout the whole. Now, in 1898, when Mr. Mouchel 
first undertook the design of Hennebique ferro-concrete, 
there was not a single example of genuine ferro-concrete 
construction in the United Kingdom, but in the short time 
that has elapsed since then over 1,300 structures have been 
completed here, while if one took into account the buildings 
of the sort all over the world, the total would reach well 
over 25,000. 

On what do the peculiar merits of ferro-concrete 
depend ? I write peculiar merits advisedly, because by the 
time you have reached the end of this chapter you will agree, 
I think, that a substance that can be put to all these diverse 
uses must have many peculiar properties to recommend it. 



134 AH About Engineering 

Steel and cement have vastly different properties, and the 
essence of ferro-concrete work is that metal strips are 
embedded in the liquid cement at just those places where 
it is known that the heaviest strains have to be met. By a 
peculiar piece of good fortune, from the builder's point of 
view, it has been found that the whole material is firmly 
welded together, the cement and steel becoming tightly 
united by physical and chemical action. Cement or con- 
crete is able to withstand enormous pressure, and it can 
be relied on to bear the vast weight of 600 lbs. to the 
square inch. Six hundred lbs. to the square inch, you 
think, is nothing so enormous, but conceive of it as 600x144 
lbs. — that is nearly 40 tons to the square foot — and 
this will give you a greater respect for the resisting pro- 
perties of the cement. It is far less strong, however, if you 
try to pull it apart, and what engineers describe as its 
stress in tension is limited to somewhere in the neighbour- 
hood of 60 lbs. to the square inch. Let us think now 
of a beam made of pure concrete with a weight pressing 
on it. The beam obviously tends to bend — think of a man 
pushing a wheelbarrow over a wooden plank — and when 
such a beam is attempting to bend you have only to con- 
sider the problem to realise that the under portion of the 
beam is tending to stretch — that is to say, is being sub- 
jected to a tension stress — ^while the upper part of the 
beam is tending to be compressed. To prevent the sohd 
concrete beam from breaking, therefore, it must be made 
so stout that the stress in tension does not exceed a pull 
of 60 lbs. to the square inch, and you can't do this 
without at the same time having the upper part of your 
beam so thick that the compression stress, too, does not 



Concrete Construction 135 

exceed 60 lbs. to the square inch. But we have already 
seen that the beam could safely bear a compression stress 
of 600 lbs. to the square inch, so we are faced with 
the unsatisfactory conclusion that nine-tenths of our 

material — ~ — _ 9_ I jg being utterly wasted, 
600 loj ^ 

It is right here, as our American friends would say, 
that the ferro-concrete engineer comes in. In the lower 
portion of the beam he embeds a couple of steel bars, and 
the steel being far stronger than the concrete, especially in 
resisting tension, our concrete bar gets support just where 
it needs it most, and the result of the whole thing is that 
a ferro-concrete beam is produced that will do the work 
of a steel beam at a saving in cost of between 15 and 20 
per cent. 

Engineering, you may think from' a statement like this, 
might almost be described as the art founded on the pro- 
verb that a penny saved is a penny earned. We should 
not be looking at the matter in that case in quite correct 
perspective, but we should have thereby grasped a very 
important aspect of the subject. Given engineering skill, 
and given that an operation is feasible, the problem before 
the engineer is always one of pounds, shillings and pence. 
He must continually ask himself what is the cheapest 
way in which a given work can be accomplished. This 
does not mean that he must put in bad material or scamped 
work, for this is the falsest economy, resulting possibly in 
loss of life and certainly in a larger increase in the ultimate 
cost. 

I have given the simplest example I could think of 
to illustrate the principle of ferro-concrete work, and if 



136 All About Engineering 

you look at a treatise on the subject you will see that the 
reinforcement, as the addition of steel is called, has to be 
carried out on the most thorough and careful lines, the 
steel used being arranged and shaped in all sorts of 
curious ways so as to meet the stress to which it is 
subjected. 

One of the amazing things about ferro-concrete is its 
durability. When Mr. de Vesian lectured on the subject 
recently, he was able from his own experience to use these 
remarkable words : 

"Every engineer and every architect knows that lime 
concrete employed by the ancient Romans has endured 
to our own times, and that iron embedded in the same 
variety of concrete has been preserved for thousands of 
years without a trace of corrosion. With ordinary con- 
struction the fact has to be faced that the strength of the 
works must depreciate year by year, in spite of costly main- 
tenance charges, which become more serious as time rolls 
on. Quite different is the position with ferro-concrete 
construction, the strength of which materially increases 
during the first few months, and goes on increasing for all 
time, although, of course, at a steadily diminishing rate. 
Hence, for ferro-concrete, the first cost is the last and only 
cost." 

Mr. de Vesian was able to give a striking illustration of 
this in connection with the recently constructed General 
Post Office building. Four-inch cubes were taken direct 
from the machine in which the material was being mixed 
and laid on one side. A test on one of these after two months 
showed that 1,800 lbs. weight had to be applied to crush 
one of the cubes. At six months 3,500 lbs. were needed 



Concrete Construction 137 

to crush a cube, and at eighteen months 4,200 lbs. 
The ferro-concrete engineers have not rested content with 
studying the remains of iron in Roman cement, but have 
made tests of their own on this point with modern material. 
Many striking examples of these tests could be quoted, but 
the most curious and searching one that I know of was in 
connection with some piles that were being used at South- 
ampton. When the time came to put them in position, it 
was found that they were too long, and lengths were cut 
off them, and the ends thrown upon the foreshore, where 
they were covered and uncovered by the tides four times 
a day. Now, obviously, the ends of the iron bars were ex- 
posed, and when several years later the bits of the piles 
were examined, it was found that where the iron lay even 
so little as a quarter of an inch under the protection of the 
concrete, it was as bright and free from rust as the day 
on which it was put in, whereas wherever it had ex- 
tended beyond the concrete it was almost entirely eaten 
away. 

I wrote a few pages back of the monolithic character of 
ferro-concrete. This applies not only to an isolated block 
of the material, but to the structure as a whole, if it has 
been properly designed. Accidents have amply proved this 
point for the engineers. There was a case, for instance, at 
a tramway depot where one of the cars ran off the lines 
and coUided with and broke the supporting column dividing 
the shed into two spans. The column was completely 
shattered, but the building as a whole resisted the shock, 
the rest of it at once taking up the strain that was intended 
to be borne by the central column. 

On another occasion, too, a truck ran into one of ten 



138 All About Engineering 

ferro-concrete legs that were supporting a set of coal bunkers 
loaded with 1,200 tons of coal. As before, the individual 
column broke, but no damage was done to the structure 
as a whole. 

I suppose the accompanying illustration, however, gives 
the most remarkable instance of this that has occurred. 
Messrs. L. G. Mouchel and Partners were at work con- 
structing a bridge over the River Tiber at Rome. The 
bridge in question is 328 feet long, and is the largest single 
span ferro-concrete bridge in the world, and was built in 
connection with the Rome Exhibition of 1911. Temporary 
piles had been driven into the river-bed to form a support 
while the work was being set up. One night, before the 
cement had properly hardened, a vessel came blundering 
along and coUided with the stajdng, knocking away one 
of the principal supports. There would have been every 
excuse if the bridge had given way, but even though the 
concrete was not properly set it resisted the shock, 
and took up the very unfair strain to which it was sub- 
jected. 

You would hardly expect concrete to withstand vibra- 
tion, but its properties in this connection are so amazing 
that it is regularly used for making piles, and is the one 
safe substance for building houses in earthquake zones. 
You must certainly have seen piles being driven home 
and will remember how it is done. The pile is loosely 
fixed, and then a machine above it raises a weight of 
several tons to a height of some feet, and drops it on 
the pile. You can hardly imagine anything more likely 
to shatter a substance, but the piles resist the shock per- 
fectly. 



^^-. 




A PONTOON MADE OF CONCRETE 

Photo supplied by Messrs. G. L. Mouchel &■ Partners, Ltd., Victoria Street, IVestminster, S.IF. 




CONCRETE BRIDGE AT ROME: THE BROKEN SCAFFOLDING 

Photo supplied by Messrs. G. L. Mouchel &■ Partners, Ltd., Victoria Street, Westminster, S.IV. 



Concrete Construction 139 

Ferro-concrete is so much a building material of the 
future that, in conclusion, I will refer to a few of the strange 
uses to which it has been put. The idea of a vessel in stone 
— and it is hard not to regard concrete as a kind of stone 
— is almost as unthinkable to most of us to-day as an 
iron ship was to our forefathers. But recently a sludge 
pumping pontoon has been built for use on the Man- 
chester Ship Canal. This astonishing vessel is loo feet long, 
28 feet wide, and 13 feet deep, while it draws 5 feet 6 inches 
of water when fully loaded. The hull, even under the boiler, 
which weighs 58 tons, is only 4 inches thick, and 3 inches 
thick elsewhere. The interior framing is made of ferro- 
concrete columns and struts. The vessel, you will realise, 
has to withstand all sorts of shocks, for the mechanical 
plant on the upper deck consists of a compound vertical 
steam-engine, condenser, three centrifugal pumps, and 
three steam winches, while even the bollards (the posts in 
the deck) by which the vessel can be moored or towed 
are made of ferro-concrete. 

The uses to which Portland cement, which after all 
is the basis of ferro-concrete, can be put are so many and 
varied that they can best be dealt with in tabular form. 
For my material I am indebted to the courtesy of 
the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers, Limited. 
The following are among the uses to which they 
ascribe its having been put in the handbook they 
publish on the subject. As you will see, the variety is 
extraordinary. 

Foundations Swimming baths 

Walls Fence posts 

Piers Garden steps 



140 



All About Engineering 



Posts 

Floors 

Roofs 

Steps 

Stairs 

Paths 

Pavements 

Roads 

Joints in drains 

Manholes 

Cesspools 

Pipes 

Mains 

Conduits 

Sewers 

Culverts 

Houses 

Belfries 

Theatres 

Motor pits 

Churches 

Lavatories 

Fives courts 

Racquet courts 

Strong rooms 

Barns 

Apple stores 

Cattle sheds 

Piggeries 

Chicken houses 

Drinking troughs 

Dog kennels 

Dairies 



Garden rollers 

Sundials 

Water towers 

Greenhouses 

Cow stalls 

Mangers 

Tanks 

Laundries 

Mushroom cellars 

Cisterns 

Well kerbs 

Reservoirs 

Clothes poles 

Terraces 

Rockeries 

Pergolas 

Vases 

Tree fillings 

Jetties 

Dams 

Docks 

Caissons 

Groynes 

Railway appliances 

Signal boxes 

Telegraph posts 

Masts 

Ships 

Barges 

Furniture 

Tombstones 

Balustrades 

Bridges 



Concrete Construction 



141 



Root cellars 
Silos 

Gas tanks 
Seawalls 
Sleepers 
Rifle ranges 
Pontoons 
Vaults 



Harbours 

Canals 

Lighthouses 

Stations 

Electric standards 

Boats 

Blackboards 



CHAPTER X 

BREAKING VIRGIN SOIL — ^AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY AND 

ITS USES 

The problems of the farmer, you may be apt to consider, 
have no place in a book that professes to be all about 
engineering, but this is largely because most of you, at any 
rate, who see this book wiU understand by agriculture 
only the processes that go on in civilised soils, that is to 
say, in made ground when the roughest operations and the 
works carried on, even on the largest scale, are to the opera- 
tions necessary to bring land into cultivation just about 
what ordinary suburban gardening is to the heaviest of 
farm ploughing. 

It is amazing, when you come to think of it, how the 
farmer is able to change the whole face of a country, but 
still more astonishing to know that Nature has her own 
agencies constantly at work changing and altering every- 
thing. The story of wind and water and sand and earth 
movements changing the land, as we know it, is a fasci- 
nating chapter in geology, but this is not the place to 
describe them. I can only here refer to one of the humblest 
of Nature's engineers, the earthworm. The great naturalist 
Charles Darwin has told the story of a field that his boys 
used always to speak of as " the stony field," because the 
stones were so thick there that they clattered as the boys 

ran down it. The field was left to itself for 30 years, and 

142 



Breaking Virgin Soil 143 

its aspect then had so changed that a horse could gallop 
uphill without his hoofs touching a single stone. All this 
change had been brought about through the agency of 
worms, which are continually passing the subsoil through 
their bodies, and bringing it up to the surface in the form 
of worm casts. The discovery is one of the many that 
have to be placed to the credit of Charles Darwin. 

It is when you pass from the hedgerows and beautifully 
trimmed fields of England, and get right out to virgin 
land, that the engineer really begins to enter into the 
domain of agriculture. Let us imagine ourselves out in wild 
forest country, and let us suppose that the settlers have 
cut down the trees, using one of the powerful motor saws 
to do it, or having recourse to the old backwoodsman's 
axes. The land is all scarred with the traces of the workers, 
but the ground is, as yet, untamed. No ploughman could 
thread his way through the maze of stumps that encumber 
the ground ; no plough, however powerful, could tear through 
the massive roots. In the past, man has had recourse to 
all sorts of devices to get rid of such obstacles as these. He 
has shattered them with explosives, burned them out of 
the ground, and tried all sorts of devices, only to find that 
the cost is too great to justify the work. And it is now 
that the engineer with the big forces that are at his dis- 
posal comes to the rescue of the farmers. Messrs. J. and H. 
Maclaren, a firm known all over the world for their heavy 
agricultural machinery, have kindly sent me an account 
of the way the engineer sets to work, and the following 
achievement stands out as typical of the work he is 
called upon to do. The problem was to clear a great 
tract of the Tintinarai Desert, in South Australia, and 



144 All About Engineering 

the land was covered with whipstick, wattle and gum 
trees up to 2| feet in diameter. For the heavier work 
that had to be done a pair of i6 horse-power Maclaren 
ploughing engines, from which the gear had been removed, 
were pressed into service. The engines were placed 
parallel to each other about 2 chains apart, and facing in 
the same direction. One end of a wire rope about 450 feet 
long was fastened to each engine, and as the engines moved 
forward they cleared a track, pulling the trees up by the 
roots, and tearing off such branches as stood upright. It 
was claimed that the cost of this clearing did not exceed 
6s. an acre. A tree with a diameter of 2| feet is a good- 
sized tree, but when you are dealing with virgin forest 
vastly bigger trees have to be dealt with, and special 
machinery has been devised to meet the case. Messrs. 
Maclaren have made a number of special engines for this 
particular kind of work. They are generally similar in 
appearance to traction engines, but they differ in certain 
important particulars. They are fitted with a special wind- 
ing drum on the main axle, taking a steel rope of about 
1 1 inches diameter ; the gearing for this drum is very 
powerful, having a direct pull equivalent to a vertical lift 
of 15 tons. The method of working is very simple : the 
engine is taken into the paddock to be cleared, and anchored 
by the front end to a fixed claw anchor, one or more of 
the firmest stumps, or any other anchorage which may be 
convenient. It is still further secured by the brakes being 
screwed hard on, and the wheels scotched by large pieces 
of waste timber. The engine works in connection with two 
sets of men, called the " chain gang," whose duties consist 
of fixing strong chains round the large roots in preparation 



Breaking Virgin Soil 145 

for the steel rope which is to haul them out. The rope is 
paid out behind the engine, and hooked on to the chain, 
which has been fastened round the stump. The winding 
gear is then put in motion, and no matter how firm a hold 
the roots may have in the ground, they are quickly torn 
out. There is seldom a root that can resist the pull of this 
rope, and the operation is done so quickly that both sets of 
men are kept busy fixing the chains. The work progresses 
rapidly, because while the engine is hauling for one set of 
men, the others are preparing their stump, and so the 
engine is kept constantly at work. By the time one stump 
is drawn, another one should be ready for the puUing rope. 
Many acres of land can be cleared in this way in a very 
short time, and the stumps with their principal roots can 
be drawn into a suitable position, and there burned. After 
this operation, the land requires very little in the way 
of clearing, but if necessary this can be done quickly and 
cheaply by means of an instrument known as a " colonial 
knifer." 

The extent to which elaborate machinery has entered 
into agricultural work is amazing. It is becoming more 
and more the practice for heavy haulage to be done by 
engines. Ploughing on a large scale is effected with heavy 
agricultural machines, and by the kindness of Messrs. John 
Fowler and Company I can show you how the farmer 
succeeds, even in the wildest districts, in forcing the stub- 
bom land into cultivation. The ordinary method is to 
have two powerful engines placed 400 or 500 yards apart 
on the opposite sides of the field. You might almost take 
them for traction engines, but if you look at them 
)'ou will see that they are furnished with an enormous drum. 

K 



146 All About Engineering 

Round this drum a steel cable is coiled. The cable is 
harnessed to a powerful steel plough, armed with several 
ploughshares, and the engines drag it alternately back- 
wards and forwards across the land. Such an instrument 
as I have shown is intended for use when the land has 
been more or less cleared or when it has been brought 
under regular cultivation, but where land is to be broken 
extra strength is given to the plough. Land would have 
to be wonderfully strong to resist such an instrument as 
the heath plough, where the engine can get its full force 
to bear on a single share, or one of the five-tyre knifers 
that we can see at work clearing the land of roots and 
stones in the Hawaiian Islands. 

Now, how is it these ploughs do their work in really 
difficult land ? Take the case of some ground that 
was used for a test, in the middle of which there 
was a vein of bog iron ore running from east to 
west. In the one portion, with light, sandy soil, the 
plough could make its deep furrow without difficulty, 
but in the middle the steel shares began to creak and 
groan. The plough only moved forward by fits and starts. 
But the engine power conquered the elementary power of 
the ore veins. The stones broke with a crash, and were 
slowly but surely forced out to the upper edge of the 
furrow by the mould-board. Colossi of from i,ioo lbs. to 
1,650 lbs. in weight were thrown up hke mere sods. The 
trench of about 260 yards was made quite smoothly, and 
the whole work proceeded so noiselessly that the humming 
and puffing of the working engine could scarcely be heard. 

Breaking heavy land is only one of the problems before 
the agricultural engineer. He has to drain marshes. One 



Breaking Virgin Soil 147 

of the classical instances of this type of work has been 
published by Messrs. John Fowler, who have printed it 
just as it was sent to them by the pioneer settler who 
did the work — Mr. J. R. Cox, who is a staunch believer in 
the use of heavy machinery for agricultural operations. 
The marsh in question lay a matter of 15 miles south-west 
of Algiers. It had an area of 750 acres, and was the source 
of all the malarial fever in the neighbourhood. Several 
canals had been cut in it, but these did not let the water 
that weUed up from the springs escape, and the marsh was 
growing an increasing danger to a thickly-populated neigh- 
bourhood. I will let Mr. Cox tell the story for himself : 

" It was impossible to cut the reeds and weeds, which 
attained a height of 5 feet, because it was exceedingly 
dangerous for men to venture on such a quagmire, where 
a number of oxen had already perished. Owing to these 
difficulties, it was not possible to see what work should 
be done for draining off the water. I therefore resolved 
to try with my Fowler's engines what results could be 
obtained. The plough being pulled by the rope of each 
engine, all that was necessary was to place the engines 
at a suitable distance from each other, and to make in 
front of each a road, which, while rendering the scheme 
practicable, would afterwards serve as a farm road. At 
first the ploughmen thought they would never be able 
to do the work. Twenty times during each bout the plough 
had to be pulled back so as to get it out of a hole. The 
land was turned over in bands about 10 yards in length, 
all in one solid piece, owing to the sticky nature of the soil 
and to the weeds. The large wheel of the plough was running 
in water ; it was exceedingly trjdng for the ploughmen, and 



148 All About Engineering 

the plough, time after time, had to be deviated from the 
straight course, so as to avoid a hole too big or too deep. 
Every furrow was full of water, but I was careful to make 
a ditch at each end. These ditches, whilst running along 
my engine roads and draining them, received at the same 
time the water from the furrows, which formed so many 
drains. The soil was thus drying naturally, and I was 
enabled to see the state of the ground, where the springs 
were, and also the low parts, so that I could make the 
necessary draining ditches. All the work was executed 
with Fowler's ploughing engines and one of their single- 
furrow deep-balance ploughs, the whole plant giving entire 
satisfaction. The first year oats were sown, and a splendid 
harvest was obtained in these lands, which hitherto had 
never produced anything. A great difficulty was experienced 
in advancing the engines forward. As I have previously 
stated, it was arranged that the passages for the engines 
would afterwards serve as roads ; and with this in view, 
I filled up in front _ of the engines all the holes that were 
found with stones, pieces of wood, etc. — and when it was 
impossible to pass, or time was wanting for filling up a 
hole, the engine was made to travel a little farther out 
on one side, and the ploughing was made with a lengthening 
piece added to the rope. Of course, the work was not 
perfect. The weeds choked the plough^ sometimes lifting it 
even out of the ground, whilst occasionally the plough 
disappeared in a hole, and we had to take it out with the 
greatest care, but every furrow made was a drain taking 
away so much water. Most offensive smells emanated from 
the land, and it was only due to the strong hygienic pre- 
cautions enforced on the men that the latter escaped taking 



Breaking Virgin Soil 149 

the malaria. The harrowing was done the first year with 
a Fowler's steam harrow, but the implement suffered very 
much owing to the large lumps made by the plough when 
it had turned over that sticky, soaked ground. The second 
year the work was executed with more facility, for good 
roads existed, but it was still very hard work for the 
plough ; a layer of land, about 8 inches to lo inches 
deep, was completely dry, but the bottom part of the 
ground was still wet. That second year, the work 
having begun late in the season, the engines were blocked 
by the rains in the ploughed ground, and it was with the 
greatest difficulty that we were able to get them out. Last 
year (1902) the harvest has been made with a reaping 
and binding machine, which amazed the great number 
of visitors who had come to see it done, and who had known 
the marsh and shot wild duck on it ; but another result 
obtained, and which, in my opinion, is the most important, 
is that fevers have been completely stamped out of the 
district." 

Work like this, I think you will agree, is more closely 
related to engineering than to agriculture, but while we 
are still on the question of drainage, 1 want to describe 
to you two remarkably beautiful machines that are used 
for running drains through clayey soil to allow water to 
escape. The first of these is a trenching machine, which 
the sketch shows us from behind. In front, of course, there 
is a heavy knife or coulter, and when this has been drawn 
across the land the farmer has a well-made trench into 
which his land can drain. What of the side drains that are 
to lead into this ? A special machine has been contrived 
to meet their case. The machine is started by lowering the 



150 All About Engineering 

mole (the portion that burrows into the ground) into a 
specially dug excavation, and dragging it across the land. 
The drains thus made will keep open for several years. 

Agricultural machinery is endless in its variety, and 
affords continual evidence of the ingenuity of the engineer. 
I learn from Messrs. Marshall, Sons and Co., of Gains- 
borough, that the application of oil as the source of energy 
for agricultural machinery has proved amazingly successful, 
and that they have been able to send their internal com- 
bustion engines all over the world. It is only natural that 
those who are going to use such engines should have wanted 
elaborate trials to satisfy themselves as to the reliability 
of the engines, and from a large series of photographs of 
their trials I have found proof of the perfect adaptability 
to their work that these engines possess. 

Agriculture is one of the oldest of the arts, and it is a 
matter that sets one thinking deeply, when one considers 
the amazing alterations that the last loo years have brought 
about. In the chapter on Water Power you will read how 
the engineer has laid hands on the very air to turn it into 
manure for the cultivators. In the machinery he now uses, 
the farmer is tapping all that expert skill that goes to the 
making of steel, to the designing of engines, and to the 
adaptation of scientific knowledge to the needs of every- 
day life. "Why, further, even the laboratories themselves 
are being pressed into service, for no man now would dis- 
pute how important it is to the farmer that the experts 
should be able to advise him on biological problems, and 
as to the bacteriological and chemical condition of his 
soil. Agriculture, from being the special study of a separate 
class, has been drawn into that network of inter-related 



Breaking Virgin Soil 151 

arts and sciences of which engineering is one ol the chief. 
That vast progress has already been made as a result of 
this collaboration is patent to every man who has the 
eyes to see, but there are, I think, none of us who can 
realise the stupendous developments that lie before us 
in the future. 



CHAPTER XI 

MINING — THE CONSTRUCTION OF A COAL MINE — DIGGING 
FOR GOLD — HOW OIL IS SECURED 

English history starts with the tin mines of Cornwall. 
In the early days, when the sea was full of the wild romance 
that Homer has crystallised once and for all for us in his 
wonderful narrative of the wanderings of Odysseus, the 
adventurous Phoenicians would pass between the Pillars of 
Heracles and cross the Bay of Biscay in their search after 
the products of the tin mines, bartering wares with the 
savage natives of the seashore. Our country has lived up 
to the early traditions of the native Celt, for it is as much 
or more on the firm basis of mineral wealth as of any innate 
Anglo-Saxon merit that her greatness is based. It is a 
point that in our pride of race we are apt to overlook, but 
the fact remains that English pre-eminence is in great 
degree due to her having had the good fortune to find 
iron and coal lying in close proximity, only needing to 
be brought together to be successfully worked. With this 
natural advantage England secured the lead in the manu- 
facture of steel, and succeeded in making herself the factory 
of the world. 

Mining lays every art and every craft under contribu- 
tion, and volumes would be needed for anything like an 
adequate account of the methods used to be described. 
We shall probably get the best idea, however, of mining 

152 



Mining 153 

if we try and see the ordinary way in which coal is got 
from the earth. 

A colliery from the outside is an unsightly place. There 
are the twirling wheels at the pit-head, the vast stacks 
of coal waiting to be loaded and sent off, and the great 
rubbish heaps of inferior coal that has been brought up 
and dumped on the surface because it was found to be in 
the way of the miners at their work. But the mine has 
required a vast expenditure of thought and time and money 
before it has reached this stage. 

The first event in the long chain of events leading 
up to the working of the colliery was when the men began 
to prospect in the belief that coal beds would be found 
lying below the surface. In such a case — and it may be 
regarded as the typical way in which coal-mining begins — 
the finst thing is to bore a hole deep down into the earth 
and thereby secure a sample of the different layers. 

We will assume that the ground is soft. In such a case 
pipes will be brought to the site selected for boring ; one 
of them with a cutting edge will be driven by blows from 
a heavy wooden block into the ground, another placed on 
the top, and the process repeated until a length of piping 
as much as 300 feet, perhaps, has been driven into the 
depths below. Into this large cylinder another pipe of 
smaller bore will be fixed, and then by a strong pressure 
of water in the smaller pipe the contents of the large pipe 
can be washed up for inspection. 

A more interesting and a more elaborate method has 
to be employed where the ground through which the bore 
hole has to pass is hard rock. In these cases the method 
is to have chisel-shaped bits on the end of heavy rods, and 



154 AH About Engineering 

to keep these incessantly rising and falling, while with 
each stroke the whole rod and the chisel turn through a 
few degrees, so that the cutting is all the time being brought 
to bear on a new surface. When this has gone on some 
time, an instrument called a " sludger " takes the place of 
the chisel, and by an arrangement of valves picks up the 
debris at the bottom of the hole. 

We will suppose that the information we have got from 
the bore hole is satisfactory. The next thing to do will be 
to sink a shaft down to the stratum of coal that we have 
discovered. The first difficulty is how satisfactorily to get 
down to the solid substance — ^what the miners call the 
stone-head — and for this various methods have been devised. 
Sometimes timber is used to form a coating for the shaft. 
It may be sufficient to line it with masonry, but there are 
times when the side must be supported by iron drums. 
It is when this stage has been reached that the miner needs 
his whole arsenal of tools. He has his diamond-shod drill 
to help him, whirled round by compressed air, perhaps, or 
driven by electricity ; he has drills that force a hole into 
the rock by pounding it with sharp-faced chisels, and the 
material he excavates is continually being drawn up out 
of the shaft by the heavy iron barrels or kibbles that are 
perpetually being passed down to him. He must have 
powerful pumps at hand, prepared to deal with any inflow 
of water, and explosives to shatter the rock into which he 
has drilled. 

Let us suppose the shaft successfully sunk, and that the 
miners have reached a stratum of coal. There are two 
chief systems on which the mine can be worked, called 
respectively the " bord and pillar " and the " long- wall " 




Photo : Tofical Pre 

BIG WINDING DRUM WITH THE CABLE THAT RAISES THE CAGE 




Photo : Topical Press 



MEN WAITING AT THE FOOT OF THE SHAFT 

COAL MINING 



Mining 155 

systems. Naturally, there are endless modifications of the 
two different systems, but as they form the basis of coal- 
mining, we may as well consider them in outline. 

" Bord-and-pillar " working is the method pursued 
chiefly when the coal is present in deep seams. The essen- 
tial idea of it is to drive galleries into the coal from a central 
road th'at has been first made, leaving portions of the 
coal behind to act as pillars. When the seam is eventually 
exhausted, the pillars are themselves cut away and taken 
to the surface'. In the " long- wall " system, on the other hand, 
the practice is for the miner to undercut the seam of coal, 
shoring it up with props, and, when a sufficient amount of 
undercutting has been done, either let it fall by its own 
weight, or bring it down by the use of explosives. 

There are few of us, I suppose, who have not been 
interested at one time or another in explosives, but the 
mining engineer has had to make a special study of them, 
and he has at his command a vast number of different 
substances each adapted for his special purpose. Gunpowder 
is the favourite explosive, for it gives out its energy in a 
slow heaving force, and brings down coal in large lumps, 
and it does not require the use of detonators to make 
it do its work. At times, however, a more powerful explo- 
sive is required, and this is got from some one or other 
modification of nitro-glycerine. Dynamite, for instance, 
is nitro-glycerine that has been absorbed in diatomaceous 
earth. Blasting gelatine, which is said to be the most 
powerful of all known explosives, contains 93 per cent, of 
nitro-glycerine and 7 per cent, of nitro-cotton. Gelatine 
dynamite, which has a heaving and rending rather than a 
shattering action, contains 80 per cent, of blasting gelatine. 



156 All About Engineering 

the remaining 20 per cent, being made of nitrate of potash 
and wood pulp. GeHgnite is similar in composition, and 
Rack-a-rock consists of a mixture of potassium chlorate 
and nitro-benzol. 

When mines are dry and dusty there is, of course, the 
ever-present danger of a terrible explosion, and to guard 
against this, special forms of cartridge have been devised. 
There is the water cartridge, for instance, where the ex- 
plosive, gelignite, is contained in a water-lined case, the 
water being designed to put out any flames at the moment 
of their formation ; there is roburite again, consisting of 
nitro-benzol and ammonium nitrate, which on combination 
give rise to fumes that would quench any flame produced 
by the explosion, and ammonite, too, consisting of nitro- 
naphthalene and ammonium nitrate, and, indeed, a whole 
host of other special cartridges. The most beautiful of all, 
which, unfortunately, does not usually work very well from 
a practical standpoint, is the lime cartridge. In this per- 
fectly dry lime is packed tightly in a cartridge, and the 
cartridge bedded home in the hole made by the drill. On 
the addition of water to the lime its volume increases 
enormously, exerting overwhelming pressure. Unfortu- 
nately, however, great difficulty is experienced in ensuring 
that the lime is perfectly dry, and if that is not the 
case, the cartridge is, of course, ineffective. 

In addition to explosives, the miner has all sorts of 
ingenious machines to help him at his work. There are 
instruments, for instance, like circular saws, driven by 
compressed air and designed to undercut the coal. Others 
represent the handsaw type, and others again, working by 
concussion, chip away the coal and save the miner a great 



Mining 157 

deal of time and muscle work. Electricity, too, has at times 
been employed with the happiest results, and if only all 
risk of sparking could be guarded against, it would have an 
enormously wide application. 

One of the chief duties of the mining engineer is to 
ensure the perfect ventilation of his mine. The methods of 
doing this are, of course, manifold. In the old days, the 
idea was to have two shafts and keep a roaring coal fire 
blazing away at one of them. The fire heated the air and 
expanded it so that it rushed up the one shaft, while cold 
air came rushing down the other, and passed on through 
the mine to get heated in its turn, and make room for a 
fresh supply. Nowadays, the method is to have powerful 
fans driving in air, or sucking it out, an elaborate designing 
and stopping of the various galleries being necessary to 
ensure that the air circulates through all the different 
parts of the mine. 

It is common knowledge that as you go down into the 
depths of the earth the heat becomes intense. The finest 
illustration that I know of the need for efficient ventilation 
comes not from the history of coal-mining, but from the 
account that Mr, Eliot Lord wrote, in the " Monograph of 
the United States Geological Survey," of the tunnelling 
work of Adolph Sutro, in connection with the Comstock 
silver lode. There was a period when the miners were some 
two miles from the nearest ventilating shaft, and the heat 
of their working chamber was fast growing too intense for 
human endurance. The pipe which supplied compressed air 
to the drills was opened at several points, and the blowers 
were worked to their utmost capacity. Still, the mercury 
rose from 98° F. on the ist of March, 1878, to 109° on the 



158 All About Engineering 

22nd of April, and the temperature of the rock face of the 
heading increased from 110° to 114° during the same period. 
From the first day of May, 1878, it was necessary to change 
the working force four times a day instead of three, as 
previously, and the men could only work during a small 
portion of the nominal hours of labour. Even the tough, 
wiry mules of the car train could hardly be driven up to 
the end of the tunnel, and sought for fresh air not less 
ardently than the men. Curses, blows and kicks could 
scarcely force them away from the blower tube openings, 
and more than once a rationally obstinate mule thrust his 
head into the end of the canvas air-pipe, and was literally 
torn away by main strength, as the miners, when other 
means failed, tied his tail to the bodies of two other mules 
in his train and forced them to haul back their companion, 
snorting viciously and slipping with stiff legs over the wet 
floor. It is a melancholy fact that though this work, with 
all its hardship, was successfully achieved, the promoter 
of it failed to reap the reward he had richly earned. 

We must leave the coal mine, I am afraid, with nothing 
but a reference to such problems as the fixing of the gradients 
so that water shall drain to the pit shaft, and that the 
loaded trucks shall have down gradients, and be empty 
when they are dragged back, saying nothing of the elaborate 
experiments carried out to get to know what are the exact 
causes of explosions and how they may be prevented ; of 
the difficulties in connection with the winding engines and 
their heavy steel cables ; of the way in which dangers have 
been lessened by the introduction of the Davy safety lamp 
and other contrivances; and of the heroic way in which 
the miners carry out great works at lightning speed to save 



Mining 159 

their entombed comrades. There are many stories told of 
the extraordinary length of time that men have Hved 
entombed, cut off from the world, without food. There 
was one case, for instance, where a miner was brought up 
aUve after twenty-three days, and another where a man 
remained similarly alive for thirty. There is a Fleet Street 
story that illustrates this point of a journalist who was 
sent down to describe the grim struggle that the miners were 
making to release an imprisoned comrade. One day, finding 
the men were for giving up the task in despair, believing it 
hopeless that their comrade could still be alive, the journalist 
mendaciously declared that he had heard a knocking through 
the wall. Stimulated by this invention, the miners redoubled 
their efforts, and they were rewarded next day by hearing 
genuine knockings, and eventually rescuing the unhappy 
prisoner. 

It is gold-mining, I suppose, that has made the strongest 
appeal to our imagination, and no wonder, either, when we 
read of the extraordinary effect that the mere rumour of 
gold being discovered exercises throughout the world. For 
an account of this extremely interesting side of the question, 
you must go to the works of Bret Harte, or to such books 
as Mr. Archibald WiUiams' " Romance of Mining." My task 
is rather to try and indicate to you the engineering aspect 
of the subject. Much of the work of the gold miner is done 
in shallow diggings, where his task consists in collecting 
the gold-bearing earth, or " dirt," and washing it by whirl- 
ing it round and round with water in the pan. A little skill 
enables him to wash away the lighter portions of the dirt. 
Behind is left the gold in the form of dust and pebbles 
which there is no difficulty in removing by hand, the whole 



i6a All About Engineering 

process being known as " panning." A modification of 
this is to introduce mechanical rockers and to combine with 
them the use of mercury, which catches at any particles of 
gold, and forms an amalgam from which afterwards it can 
easily be liberated by heat. This process can hardly be 
described as engineering, but in some of the mines, water at 
high pressure assists the miners. Gold is found often em- 
bedded in gravel, and as it usually sinks to the bottom of 
the gravel, it is clear that it can only be mined either by 
driving tunnels through the base of the formation, or by 
getting rid of the mass of superincumbent gravel. The 
most effective way of disintegrating the gravel is by dis- 
charging, at the face of the formation, jets of water at 
high pressure. Meanwhile a tunnel will have been driven 
to a point below the gravel to a neighbouring ravine, and 
when the ravine bottom has been filled with tons of mercury 
the gravel will be driven along the tunnel by the force of the 
water, and the gold falling through the stream by the force 
of gravity will amalgamate with the mercury. It is clear 
that great engineering skill will at times have to be emploj^-ed 
in order successfully to drive the tunnels to the places 
required. In his book on " Our New West," Mr. Samuel 
Bowles gave a striking picture of the devastating effect that 
this type of mining produces on the country-side. " Tor- 
nado," he wrote, " flood, earthquake, and volcano combined 
could hardly make greater havoc, spread wider ruin and 
wreck, than are to be seen everywhere in the track of the 
larger gold-washing operations. None of the interior streams 
of California, though naturally pure as crystal, escape the 
change to a thick yellow mud, from this cause, early from 
their progress in the hills. The Sacramento is worse than 



Mining i6i 

the Missouri. Many of the streams are turned out of their 
original channels, either directly for mining purposes, or 
in consequence of the great masses of soil and gravel that 
come down from the gold-washings above. Thousands of 
acres of pine-land along their banks are ruined for ever 
by the deposits of this character. A farmer may have his 
whole estate turned into a barren waste by a flood of sand 
and gravel from some hydraulic mining up stream. More, 
if a pine orchard or garden stands in the way of the 
working of a rich gulch or bank, orchard or garden 
must go." 

It is when gold is found interspersed with quartz, as in 
South Africa, and has to be mined, that the engineer proper 
has his greatest share in the work. In that country deep 
shafts have to be dug and the quartz definitely mined 
from the bowels of the earth. The crude material is brought 
up from below the surface in much the same way as I have 
described with coal, it is roughly sorted and broken, and 
then carried direct to the stamping mill where heavy metal 
stamps,weighing about a ton each, and worked by cams, break 
it to powder. Mercury is again used to pick out the gold, 
and then what is left, known as the tailings, is treated 
v/ith cyanide of potassium which combines even more 
readily than mercury with the gold. When the chemical 
action is concluded the liquid is treated with zinc, which 
precipitates the gold in fine granules at the bottom of the 
liquid. 

Diamond mining has, of course, its more special charac- 
teristics, and for very many years the origin and character 
of the diamond remained a mystery. So much so was this 
the case, that among the early inquiries sent out by the 

L 



i62 All About Engineering 

newly formed Royal Society was the question whether it 
was true that where diamonds had been extracted from 
the beds in which they were found, the beds if left alone 
would produce fresh stones ! At present, as every chemist 
knows, diamond is merely pure carbon that has been forced 
to assume its present crystalline form under high pressure 
and temperature. The most noted of the diamond fields are 
those at Kimberley, and the stones are found in the clay 
formation that occurs in the district in great " pipes," in 
some cases thousands of feet across, that have been squirted 
up from the bowels of the earth. The pipes are mined in 
very much the same way as is done with coal, and though 
the blue clay is very hard, it is found to crumble away 
after it has been exposed to changes of temperature and to 
water. After being strewn on the ground for a year, the 
material is sorted by the action of water, and the heavier 
portion of the " concentrates " is brought to the machine 
known as the pulsator, which throws it up and down and 
retains the diamonds owing to their having the property 
of being held in the grease at the bottom of the trays of 
which the pulsator consists. The last process is to melt up 
the grease, when diamonds and rubbish settle to the bottom 
and the diamonds can easily be separated out. 

We have heard so much lately of oil fuel, and are certain 
to hear so much more of it in the near future, that we may 
as well learn something of the methods adopted by the 
engineer to drain the earth of this most valuable material. 
In its essence the work of oil boring is very similar to the 
methods that I have described as adopted by the prospector 
for coal, but in the old^days — and even to-day, especially in 
Roumania — the favourite method was to dig pits as much 




P io(o : i7iternatiO}iai Prc:>s I'/ioco. Co. 

AN OIL WELL SPOUTING 



Mining 163 

as 600 feet deep and allow the oil naturally to flow from 
the surrounding strata into these depressions. 

Oil, as you probably know, is merely coal in another 
form, and with the changes that have taken place under- 
ground to turn the coal into oil, the usual experience is 
that a great deal of gas has been formed under high pressure 
at the same time, and when once the engineers have suc- 
ceeded in tapping the oil-bearing strata, it may be that 
the well wiU flow for a long time, or indeed that there wiU 
be a violent discharge of oil and sand to the surface that for 
days, or even weeks, will carry everything before it. Such 
a spouting well has been aptly described as a gusher. 

One of the hardest tasks that the oil engineer is asked 
to undertake is that of controlling these gushers once they 
have broken loose. Their action is so amazingly powerful, 
that with the sand they bring up they are able to pierce 
great sheets of steel. The method adopted has been so 
graphically described by Mr. A. Beeby Thompson, in his 
" Petroleum Mining and Oilfield Development," that I will 
quote you his description. He writes : " For many years 
it has been the practice in Baku and Grosny to place a 
massive steel or chilled cast-iron shield some 15 feet or 
20 feet above the mouth of the well, the discharged 
mixture of oil, sand, and stones being thereby prevented 
from rising hundreds of feet into the air, and being dissi- 
pated by the winds. Heavy cross-timbers, to which the 
12-inch blocks are bolted, are placed in the derrick when 
a flowing weU is expected, and the timbers are so arranged 
that the block can be drawn over the mouth of the well 
by ropes from a distance when a flow commences or appears 
imminent. So destructive is the fiercely discharged mixture 



164 All About Engineering 

of sand, oil, and gas, that the massive Russian derricks are 
often totally destroyed, and even the chilled iron blocks 
have been perforated one after another in succession by 
a particularly violent gusher. The unexpected appearance 
of a violent gusher generally leads to the loss of great 
quantities of oil through the absence of provision of a 
' fountain shield,' the oil being ejected through the sum- 
mit of the derrick to a height of 100 to 300 feet, with such 
impetuosity and with so much gas that the well can- 
not be closely approached. In such cases a side timber 
structure is often built to the derrick at a height of about 
20 feet, and massive fountain shields are pushed over the 
mouth of the well from the side. The stream of oil is 
diverted along channels, kept open in the accumulation of 
ejected sand by gangs of labourers, to a depression where 
the pumps can deliver it to the storages." 

All sorts of methods are used for extracting oil from 
deep-lying strata when the force of the imprisoned gas is 
not sufficient of its own accord to bring the oil to the sur- 
face. In some wells pumping is resorted to, in others bailers 
are used. A clever method is to aerate the gas so as to 
lighten the weight of the column, and thereby enable it 
to rise to the surface of the ground, and sometimes the oil 
is definitely forced to the surface by the pumping in of 
compressed air. A task requiring special judgment is the 
shattering of the oil strata by shots fired in the well itself. 
In favourable circumstances the flow of oil is very materially 
increased, but there have been occasions when the well has 
thereby been irretrievably ruined. Another particularly 
neat appliance brought into action is when a flowing well 
takes fire. If the flow is very powerful, it is no easy matter 



Mining 165 

to extinguish the fire, and the engineers have hit on the 
ingenious idea of injecting into the oil before it has reached 
the surface huge volumes of steam or carbon dioxide, or 
of some other non-inflammable gas, on several occasions 
with the happiest results. 

The Hmits of the chapter might be extended indefinitely 
if I were to touch on the many romantic stories of silver 
and copper mining, or were to attempt to describe in detail 
the various methods by which men have to set about the 
mining of quicksilver, tin, iron, marble, granite, rubies, salt, 
sulphur, or the rest of the many substances that are dug 
from the bowels of the earth. If you have followed me so 
far, however, you will have realised a few of the difficulties 
with which the mining engineer has to contend. He must 
be a man of resource, for he will never know the hour when 
it may be his duty to devise a scheme to set free his men 
from imminent disaster ; he must be gifted with an eye 
for country, an imagination that will enable him to guess 
at the direction that the strata are likely to take as they 
dip beneath the surface of the earth ; he must have know- 
ledge and judgment in an exceptional degree, for if his 
instinct misleads him, he may readily expend the capital 
available for the mine in valueless excavation, and, above 
all, he must be a man of sterling honesty, able to resist 
the temptation of so compiling a report on the prospects 
of the mine for which he is responsible as to please the 
directors of the concern in a greater degree than is just 
in the interests of the shareholders. With these qualities, 
and wdth the good fortune necessary in every walk of life, 
the miner has opportunities for which he will be envied by 
many of his fellows. He has work that brings him into 



i66 All About Engineering 

touch with his fellows when they are in the grips of the 
keenest emotion ; he sees man both at his best and at 
his worst, and there will be times in his life at any rate 
when he will see or experience a fuller sense of the true 
meaning of romance than is given to the majority of us 
to enjoy. 



CHAPTER XII 

ELECTRICITY AND WATER — THE CONTROL OF NIAGARA— 
PUGET SOUND — FACILITIES IN SCOTLAND — THE ARTI- 
FICIAL MANUFACTURE OF NITRATES 

There has probably been no time in the history of the 
world when it has been so easy for us to look ahead. In 
matters of government there are many who hope much 
from the all-conquering march of Socialism, and many more 
who regard the idea as the waters at the bottom of the 
steep slope down which the demon-driven Gadarene swine 
were hurried to their doom. In medicine the vista opening 
out before the doctor is so vast and alliuing that it seems 
to us almost as if we were witnessing the birth of the 
science. In physics, our leading thinkers believe they are 
groping to a real understanding of the mysterious link 
that binds together energy and matter ; in chemistry there 
are rumours that the dream of the alchemist of trans- 
muting the elements has been achieved ; and the engineer, 
while developing in all directions, is, at last, by the union 
of electricity and water power, appearing to enter into his 
richest heritage. 

There is a theory of progress that I would like to put 
before you. I want you to imagine yourself standing at a 
vast distance away with a panorama before you of the 
world's history, and the means of estimating in numbers 
the condition of the world from the point of view of pro- 

167 



i68 All About Engineering 

gress. Supposing we tried to plot this progress. We might 
measure units of time along a horizontal line, and units 
of progress advance along a vertical line. It may be that 
we should find that the world had advanced by leaps, 
or it may be — and to me the idea is a very attractive one — 
that its advance has been like a geometric progression sum. 
Whichever view you adopt, you come, I think, to the 
same conclusion that as the world gets older, it is hurrying 
on faster and faster to some great climax. 1 have tried to 
make my meaning clear with two diagrams. 

The curve is the ordinary curve which results by taking 
such a simple geometric series as 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and so forth 
and measuring these values along the vertical line, while 
we measure the corresponding numbers i, 2, 3, 4, 5 along 
the horizontal line. The curve is got by plotting the points 
at which perpendiculars from these lines would intersect. 
You will notice that I have used a larger scale for the 
horizontal line than for the vertical, so as to make the 
figure simpler to draw and to follow. The difficulty of 
appreciating the first six stages of progress is so great that 
1 have had to leave out the first five sets of figures. If we 
look at the matter from the point of view that man has 
progressed by leaps, with stages of rest between the leaps, 
we get really to a similar result, for, if 1 read history aright, 
the leaps upwards are increasing in height as the years go 
by, while the periods of rest grow shorter and shorter, and 
it is only necessary to join the various peaks to get a similar 
curve. The point I wish to bring home is that to-day we 
must regard our world as being in the state of the right- 
hand of the figure, and in consequence we are justified in 
believing that in our own lifetime we shall see a degree of 



oo" K to O T O c<I t- 


- 




<0 




















^1 




















H 




























1 


o 














^^^ 






M 




























































































































\ 




















\ 










































O 



ooooooooo 



Electricity and Water 169 

advance that will make the present appear to us a period 
as far removed from us as the time of the Tudors, or 
perhaps even that of the Normans, appears to us 
to-day. 

All this is, of course, pure speculation, but there can be 
no doubt of the solid fact that the utilisation of water power 
to generate electricity is bound to have a very great influence 
on industrial development. One has only to mention the 
word water-power for the mind to think naturally of Niagara, 
for though several great schemes have been put into opera- 
tion besides the harnessing of Niagara, the work done 
there has rightly fired the imagination of the world. Niagara 
yields by day and by night to Canada and America the 
enormous total of 580,000 horse-power, and as the methods 
employed at the Falls are similar to those in use in other 
parts of the world, a description of them will help us to 
realise the method by which man has succeeded in bringing 
the white coal, as water has picturesquely been called, into 
his service. 

The Falls of Niagara lie on the border-line between 
Canada and the United States of America ; they are divided 
into two by Goat Island, an island 75 acres in area, the 
Horseshoe Fall on the Canadian side being 2,600 feet in 
width, and having a drop of 169 feet, and the American 
Fall, which is of similar depth, being 1,000 feet wide. When 
one realises that the mass of water passing over Niagara 
is such that it develops the enormous total of 7,000,000 
horse-power, it will be seen that the American and Canadian 
engineers have, as yet, only drawn on a bare fraction of the 
energy available for their purpose. In fact, the water that 
they use to drive the turbines that generate the electricity. 



170 All About Engineering 

as its solitary effect on the Falls, has lowered the head of 
the water by between 2| inches and 3 inches. 

It was on April 4th, 1895, that Rudolph Baumann, a 
Swiss engineer, turned the wheel that started the generation 
of electricity at the Niagara Falls. To effect this, however, 
and still more, to make possible the present development 
of electrical power at Niagara, a vast engineering work has 
been required. The problem has been to cut within the 
cliff by the sides of Niagara a series of vast tunnels — pen- 
stocks, the engineers call them — ^through the solid rock. 

The tunnels have had to be driven downwards the 
whole depth of the Falls to enable the turbines to take 
full advantage of the force developed by the falling water. 
They are lined all the way with brick and concrete, and 
as the water reaches the bottom it strikes the vanes of 
turbines, forcing them to revolve, and to turn with them 
the monster generators that develop the electricity. When 
the water has passed through the turbines, it must obviously 
be allowed to escape without any check, for otherwise, of 
course, it would exert a back pressure on the turbines, and 
nullify to some extent the advantage gained from having 
so vast a head of water. To indicate to some extent the 
magnitude of the task, I will quote you a few figures relating 
to the tunnel or tail race of the Niagara Falls' Power 
Company, which was the first to be cut. It is 7,000 feet long, 
and at its greatest section is 21 feet by 18 feet 10 inches. 
A thousand men were employed working at it continuously 
for three years, and they excavated in all 300,000 tons of 
rock, and used 16,000,000 bricks for the lining. For the 
wheel-pits at the base of the penstocks, 123,455 cubic yards 
of rock had to be excavated. 



Electricity and Water 171 

The simplest part of the whole scheme is the supplying 
of water to the tunnels. All that has had to be done is 
to build a wall slanting down stream, and to provide 
sluice gates and gratings to prevent the possibility of solid 
material getting into the turbines, 

Canada and the United States of America have profited 
richly from their enterprise. Niagara itself has become 
the site of a large commercial settlement. When the power 
was first generated, it was only practicable to send it to 
Buffalo, 21 miles away, but now it has been carried to 
Syracuse on the east and to Toronto on the west, the towns 
being 250 miles apart. Already schemes of further develop- 
ment are on the way, and it will not be long before Niagara 
is furnishing power to towns that are 300 miles or more 
distant. 

Naturally, one of the difficulties against which the 
engineers have had to contend has been the best means 
of carrying the power. Though Mr. Marconi, among other 
engineers, believes that the time will come when it will 
be possible to transmit power through the ether by wire- 
less, it has so far been necessary to carry it on copper wires. 
When these pass through desolate country, the engineers 
are met with difficulties of all sorts. Valleys have to be 
crossed, wide paths have to be driven through forests, and 
precautions taken to prevent ill-disposed persons from 
stealing the copper wire that is used for the purpose. When 
you consider that the ordinary house supply of electricity 
comes in at a pressure of between 150 and 250 volts, you 
will get some idea of the tremendous height of the voltage 
by the statement that 100,000 volts is now a common 
pressure for it to be carried at, while electricians are con- 



172 All About Engineering 

fidently looking forward to the time when even this voltage 
will be doubled. 

From Niagara, let us pass to Puget Sound in the State of 
Washington. In the case of the Puyallup River, the engineers 
had no great falls of which they could take advantage, but 
they had a river which ran a riotous, precipitous course. 
A daring scheme in this case has been carried out. Far 
away among the pine forests of the mountain a low dam 
was built to bank back the water by a height of about 4 feet. 
From this reservoir two concrete walls were built out, lying 
60 feet apart close by the river, and then curving, so as to run 
along its course and to get nearer and nearer together until 
at last they were only 8 feet apart. Here a gate was built 
with sluices, so as to ensure a steady supply of clear water. 
From this intake the engineers built an enormous wooden 
trough 8 feet wide and 8 feet deep, and they carried this 
trough on stout trestles for a distance of 10 miles along 
the mountain sides. You can imagine the engineering skill 
and resource required for this 1 At times the trough runs 
along the face of a cliff, which towers 500 feet above it, 
while below a dizzy precipice falls sheer to the river bed. 
Twice it had to be carried across a deep valley, and even- 
tually it discharges its waters into a large concrete basin. 
You have guessed by now, I expect, the object the engineers 
had in view ; while the river bed has a steep gradient, the 
trough goes over an easy gradient, just enough to ensure 
a steady flow, with the result that, when the water has 
reached the concrete tank prepared to receive it, it is 
1,730 feet above the level of the river from which it has 
come, and into which it is going to be discharged. The 
engineers, in fact, have mimicked Niagara, with the differ- 



Electricity and Water 173 

ence that, whereas at Niagara the head is only a matter 
of about 170 feet, they have ten times that fall at their 
disposal. From the small concrete reservoir, the water is 
carried by eight steel pipes to. the power-house. At their 
mouths, the pipes are 6 feet across, but as they reach the 
turbines, they narrow until they are only 3 feet in diameter. 
If you have ever felt the force of moving water, as, for 
instance, by bathing in a roughish sea, you will realise 
the enormous pressure that these pipes have to with- 
stand. You have perhaps seen firemen struggling with a 
hose, and you have heard that it is an easy matter to knock 
a man down with a jet of water. To withstand this pres- 
sure, the great steel pipes have to be firmly anchored down 
at intervals of 125 feet. They discharge their water into 
the turbines waiting to receive it, and the electric power 
that is then generated is carried away on the wires, as at 
Niagara, to drive the machinery in the great towns in the 
district. 

To describe the various plants in use for generating 
power would be an endless task. Switzerland has long ago 
taken advantage of its waterfalls ; vast undertakings are 
at work in California and the West Pacific Coast ; Mexico 
is exploiting its resources ; in Norway, as we shall see later, 
a great new industry is being built up on the basis of water- 
generated electricity, while all over the Continent similar 
schemes are either working or projected. 

In Great Britain, however, we have not yet taken full 
advantage of such facilities as we enjoy. It is true that at 
Kinlochleven, in Argyllshire, a large hydro-electric plant 
has been successfully employed, and that other falls have 
been harnessed, but if the views of engineers are correct, 



174 AH About Engineering 

we could, if we wished, enormously increase our stock of 
available power by tapping the water supplies of the High- 
lands. Mr. Alexander Newlands, the assistant engineer of 
the Highland Railway, has made a special study of this 
subject, and as it is a matter that intimately concerns the 
future, and even the present, prosperity of our country, 
the arguments he puts forward in favour of tapping the 
Highlands for power are of especial interest. Mr. New- 
lands opens the pamphlet he has written on the subject 
rather on the lines of an interesting paper published by 
the British Science GuUd, where a careful analysis 
was made of all the possible sources of power, and 
he shows that the time must come when these will be 
exhausted. Now, it has been estimated by Professor 
Forbes, F.R.S., that the water power available in Scotland 
is, in all probability, sufficient to work the whole of the 
Scotch railways with a substantial surplus for other pur- 
poses. The water possibilities of Great Britain lie chiefly 
in the North and West of Scotland, where the rainfall 
throughout the year is fairly uniform, and amounts in many 
parts to the considerable total of 60 inches a year, and, in 
addition, the Highlands include many lochs with a rapid 
and easy fall to the sea. Further, particularly in the North 
and West Highlands, the drainage areas are all near the 
seaboard, which is so sheltered and indented as to afford 
pecuUar advantages for access by shipping. 

I have already referred to the Kinlochleven installation 
as one of those in the Highlands, but it is interesting, as 
indicating the considerable opportunities afforded in the 
North of Scotland, to notice that the reservoir built in 
connection with it is probably the largest artificial one in 



Electricity and Water 175 

Europe, being y^ miles long, and having an average width 
of I mile. It can compound the huge total of 20,000,000,000 
gallons of water, sufficient to give an output of 30,000 
horse-power for about 100 days. The cost of the work was 
£600,000, or equal to £20 per horse-power. Commenting 
on this work, Mr. Newlands writes : 

" With the exception of its high elevation and heavy 
rainfall, the Kinlochleven area is not more favoured than 
many areas of greater extent throughout the West and 
North of Scotland, and in many of them the expense of a 
dam would be unnecessary, owing to the presence of natural 
reservoirs or lochs in most of them." 

As regards the future utilisation of this power, Mr. New- 
lands enters a caution. He regards it as probable that, 
owing to the interest that is now being taken in this source 
of power, development will proceed along lines of private 
enterprise, and he shows that if steps are not taken to 
insist that the various areas must be treated as a whole, a 
great deal of the power will be wasted through individual 
landowners making use of such small sources as would 
suit their individual requirements, and thereby employ- 
ing the power wastefully. There can, I think, be no doubt 
that the proper thing to do would be to look on these power 
possibiUties as a national asset, and to develop them by 
Government assistance, and for this it is probable that 
before long it will be necessary to have recourse to a Royal 
Commission. 

Let us see now how this power compares as regards 
cost with the power we are at present raising from steam. 
Naturally, we have in each case to consider the cir- 
cumstances affecting each particular installation, but, 



£ 


s. 


d. 


I 


19 





4 


II 


8 


4 


I 


7 


5 









176 All About Engineering 

broadly, the cost can be taken as being about 50 per cent, 
of the cost of steam, raised under the most favourable 
conditions, and electric power has been advertised before 
now at a rate as low as 30s. per horse-power per annum. 
Here are some striking figures taken from a fairly recent 
estimate that appeared in the Electrical Review as showing 
the minimum cost of power from various sources : 

Electrical horse-power per annum from 

water in Switzerland 
Steam in England 
Blast-furnace gas in Germany 
Producer gas in England 

A recent estimate has shown that the quantity of water 
power in Scotland amounts to about 1,000,000 horse-power, 
but supposing that we were to halve this estimate, and 
to put it at only 500,000 horse-power, this would represent 
an amount of power on a ten-hours' working day basis 
throughout the year equal to that obtained from 3,500,000 
tons of coal, which is a twelfth of the total quantity raised 
in Scotland for igii. Now, supposing that we estimate 
the price of coal at los. a ton, the 3,500,000 tons required 
would cost £1,750,000, an amount of money that it is 
surely worth while to save by harnessing the water power. 
These are the words that Mr. Newlands makes use of to 
drive his lesson home : 

" It would almost appear, therefore, that these High- 
land water powers, which, as powers, are without the 
interference of any labour combination, should be laid 
under toll for the requirements of our industrial life. The 
market for our output is not next door, it is world-wide. 



Electricity and Water 177 

much of our raw material is imported, and the faciUties for 
transport by land or sea, either to or from the North of 
Scotland, are already equal to those that exist in any 
portion of the British Isles." 

There is an aspect of the utilisation of water power to 
which I should like now especially to direct your attention. 
It is ten years or more since Sir William Crookes warned 
us all that the world was in danger of an ammonia or a 
nitrate famine. To realise the meaning of the statement, 
we shall have to consider for a moment an aspect of the 
art of agriculture. In the very early days, man was an 
animal living off the produce of hunting. Then he appears 
to have realised the idea of pasturing flocks and herds, 
thereby increasing the numbers of his kind that a given 
area of land could support. His next stage — necessitated 
by the struggle for existence — was when he started tilHng 
the soil. Passing beyond this, he reaUsed the advantage to 
be gained from leaving his fields fallow for a period, and 
later discovered that it was even a better method to practise 
a continual rotation of crops. To-day we are hving in the 
days of artificial manures, and of these one of the most 
important is ammonia or nitrate. The trouble is that 
crops require nitrogen in some such form for their existence, 
and are unable to make use of the pure nitrogen that is 
everywhere present in the air. Hitherto, apart from farm- 
yard manure, we have relied for our supply chiefly on the 
great salt bed deposits in such places as Chile and Peru ; 
but about ten years ago. Sir William Crookes warned us 
that the time was not far distant when these supplies 
would give out, and appealed to the chemists to find some 
effective means of inducing the nitrogen of the air to enter 



178 All About Engineering 

into combination with the oxygen and provide a supply 
of the nitrate that was wanted. 

The chemists have responded nobly to the appeal, and, 
in co-operation with the engineers, have found a source of 
supply that seems indefinitely to promise us as much 
nitrate as we may have need of. Quite recently, Mr. Thomas 
N. Norton, an American Consul in Germany, brought out 
a most interesting volume in the Special Agents Series in 
the Department of Commerce and Labour in the United 
States on " The Utilisation of Atmospheric Nitrogen," and 
he showed the various ways in which the chemists had 
succeeded in getting atmospheric nitrogen to enter into 
the desired combination. The question barely comes within 
the scope of this volume, but as it is a subject of which we 
are all bound to hear more within the next few years, 1 will 
include a short account of it. 

Mr. Norton starts his paper with a careful analysis of 
the present situation, and he concludes that there are only 
four ways of meeting the world's present demand for com- 
bined nitrogen. These are : 

(i) By a temporarily increased supply of saltpetre from 
deposits, soon, however, to be exhausted ; 

(2) By an increased supply of ammonia as a by-product 
of coal and peat, dependent on a general reform in the use of 
these materials, as held and limited by the extent to which 
they may be used as sources of light and heat, and Hmited, 
further, in point of time, by the world's supply of fossil fuel, 
with a possible exhaustion within a few centuries ; 

(3) By the closest economy in preserving all waste forms 
of combined nitrogen, vegetable or animal, so that they 
may be utihsed as plant food ; 



Electricity and Water 179 

(4) By the technical transformation of atmospheric 
nitrogen into combined forms available for the needs of 
agriculture and the arts. 

Whilst there are undoubtedly possibilities in the second 
and third of these methods, the general opinion among 
scientific men is that the time has come when the best 
talent must be directed to solving the problem of utilising 
industrially the nitrogen of the air. 

With the method of Professor Haber we need not 
concern ourselves. He has succeeded by chemical means 
in inducing the nitrogen of the air to combine with hy- 
drogen to form ammonia, and the process with its modi- 
fication is now under the control of one of the great 
German syndicates. 

Another method of utihsing atmospheric nitrogen ^as 
a source of plant food interests us closely, for it consists 
of inducing the nitrogen of the air to combine directly 
with the oxygen to form nitric acid, and so by a simple 
process to form nitrates. It will, I think, be sufficient for 
our purpose if we trace the story of one of the means 
by which this can be done. In 1785, the great scientist, 
Cavendish, made the discovery that when electric sparks 
were passed through air, an acid was formed. Seventy odd 
years later, in 1857, Bunsen discovered that the acid thus 
formed was nitric acid. Various experiments were made, 
and it was eventually found that if an electric arc is placed 
under the influence of a powerful magnet, the arc of flame 
is turned into a great disc of flame, and that as air passes 
through this flaming roaring electric discharge, nitric acid 
is produced. It is perhaps hardly necessary to say that on 
the basis of this discovery, numerous processes have been 



i8o All About Engineering 

patented, and are now being worked. To quote only the 
exploitation of a single method, we will consider the 
works that have been erected at Notodden. In 1906, a 
dam was constructed to give a fall of water of 165 feet. 
There is a big volume of water there, amounting to a flow 
of 75 cubic metres a second. The water passes to four vast 
turbine generators, each of 10,000 horse-power. As you 
can imagine, power of this dimension has to be handled 
carefully, and to carry it there are four separate lines, each 
consisting of six cables, 12 millimetres thick. 

I should add that the chemists have not contented 
themselves with the working out of this principle alone, 
but have introduced others, some of which do not neces- 
sarily demand the use of the electric current. I have intro- 
duced the subject for two reasons, partly to give praise to 
the energy of the chemists who have succeeded in solving 
the question of the world's future food supply, and partly 
to show the enormous importance of utiUsing the great 
natural stores of energy that are at present going to waste. 
England owes much of her prosperity to the fortunate fact 
that, at a critical period of the world's history, she dis- 
covered that she contained great coal-fields, lying close 
to great deposits of iron. It is to no small extent on this 
great natural advantage that she has been able to build 
up her Empire and reach her position of dominance. We 
know full well that our stores of coal cannot last us for 
ever, and it behoves us to utilise to the full the great natural 
advantages that we possess in water power. There can, 
I think, be little doubt that the future of the world must 
lie with those who own the great sources of power, whether 
they are forced by circumstances, as we have been, to spend 



Electricity and Water i8i 

it as capital, or whether, as in the case of the utiHsation of 
water power, they can regard it as income. It may well 
be that the next 200 years will see the gradual develop- 
ment of those districts which enjoy great natural sources 
of power in water, just as it may happen that the deserts, 
with their scorching sun, may become densely populated 
regions. Man's predominance both over Nature and his own 
fellow-men has always been dependent on his control of 
power interpreted in its broadest sense. The power may be 
intellectual, moral, or physical, and if we are not to be left 
behind in the race, it is our bounden duty to our descen- 
dants, if not to ourselves, to strain every nerve to take full 
advantage of such opportunities as lie before us. It is only 
on those terms that a nation can survive, and it is not 
easy to see on what other grounds its continued existence 
could be justified. 



CHAPTER XIII 

TESTING — ^WORK AT THE NATIONAL PHYSICAL LABORATORY 
— A NEW SYSTEM OF DETECTING STRAINS IN ENGINEER- 
ING MATERIALS 

One of the least easy ideas to drill into the mind of the 
boy who is starting a course in science is the point that 
measurement — and accurate measurement, at that — ^is the 
real foundation of science. It is only necessary, however, 
to study the development of scientific knowledge to realise 
that from the earliest times of which we have knowledge 
measurement has spelled progress. The Greek philosophers, 
and after them, Lucretius, were groping at the atomic 
theory, to quote but one example, but their imaginings 
remained mere speculation until, nearly 2,000 years later, 
men began to measure exactly what happened, and the 
atomic theory was born. 

You may regard engineering as an Art based on the 
science of accurate measurement, and you will find few 
engineers to quarrel with your view. The bridge builder, 
the dam builder, the railway Hne constructor, and, in fact, 
the engineer generally, all have to study accurately the 
amount of expansion and contraction that the work on 
which they are engaged will undergo under the influence 
of heat and cold. They have to measure and determine the 
stresses and strains to which their buildings will be sub- 

182 



Testing 183 

jected. They must take their observations with so minute 
a degree of accuracy that they can start boring from the 
two sides of a hill, and so arrange their work that the men 
on either side will meet in the centre with an error of not 
more than an inch or two. They must study their materials 
and know exactly how they will behave, whether they are 
exposed to arctic cold or tropical heat. They must, in 
fact, be men who can measure with exactness anything, 
no matter what it may be, with which they are brought 
into contact. 

To indicate to you in a small way the accuracy demanded 
of the working engineer, I will tell you a striking story of 
engineering work that I heard only recently. The problem 
was the setting up of a large cylinder in a battleship. In this 
a piston had to move up and down, and the work had to be 
so exact that the extreme accuracy of i,oooth of an inch had 
to be reached, for on its perfect truth depended the power 
of the vessel to direct its gun fire. The engineer in charge, 
realising the responsibility of his position, took all pre- 
cautions. He made his measurements, and to ensure there 
being no possible mistake, he even went so far as to polish 
the steel bed on which the cylinder was to rest. It took 
weeks to install, and at the end it was found to be out 
of truth and useless. The firm responsible for the work 
were not unnaturally annoyed, and justly enough deter- 
mined to settle where the blame ought to rest. The work 
was dismantled under supervision, and at the last it was 
found that the responsibility rested with one of the work- 
men, who, carelessly sharpening a pencil, had allowed the 
shavings of the pencil to remain on the polished bed on 
which the cylinder was to rest. I have quoted this story 



i84 All About Engineering 

as it shows, I think, in a striking way the extreme accuracy 
that may be expected of the engineer. 

The British Government have realised somewhat tardily 
the importance of this work of testing, and after many years 
of delay have found the money necessary to establish and 
equip the National Physical Laboratory at Bushy House, 
Teddington. The credit for the original idea belongs really 
to the Germans, Werner von Siemens and von Helmholtz, 
who induced their Government to found such an institution 
during the years 1883-7. Sir Oliver Lodge, as President 
of the Mathematical and Physical section of the British 
Association, urged that such an institution should be 
established in this country, but though a committee met 
and discussed plans, nothing was done. Four years later, 
Sir Douglas Galton took the matter up again in a paper 
before the same section, and a petition to Lord Salisbury 
resulted in the appointment of a Treasury Committee, 
under the chairmanship of that famous veteran of science. 
Lord Rayleigh. The report of the Committee was unani- 
mous : " That a public institution should be founded for 
standardising and verifying instruments for testing materials 
and for the determination of physical constants." 

An invitation was sent to the Royal Society to give 
effect to the finding of the Committee, and eventually 
Bushy House, which till 1896 was the residence of the 
Due de Nemours, the son of King Louis Philippe, was 
selected for the purpose. 

Owing to the dramatic circumstances attending the 
collision between the Olympic and the Hawke in the Solent, 
the feature of the National Physical Laboratory that has 
appealed most strongly to the public has been the erection 



Testing 185 

and equipment of the great experimental tank that the 
nation owes to the pubhc-spirited generosity of Mr. A. F. 
Yarrow, who, in 1908, offered £20,000 for the building of 
such a tank, provided that a sum of £2,000 a year should 
be guaranteed for a period of ten years for its upkeep. 
The Institute of Naval Architects responded to this offer 
by guaranteeing £1,340, and the Executive Committee of 
the Laboratory undertook to find the balance. 

A visit to the tank is of exceptional interest. It is a 
great sheet of water, 550 feet long and 32 feet wide, with 
another smaller tank beside it. The track and its 
carriage, designed to draw the models of ships that are 
being tested, runs down the whole length of the tank, 
and the construction of the track was undoubtedly the 
most difficult part of the work. Special arrangements had 
to be made to prevent the rails giving under the weight 
of the i4|-ton carriage that has to draw the model vessels, 
as it was felt that any irregularity of this sort must inter- 
fere with the accuracy of the experiments. The levelling 
of the rails again was a work demanding extreme care, the 
method adopted being to connect two jars of water placed 
40 feet apart by a rubber hosepipe. Needle points dipped 
into the water of the jars, and when the reading of the 
screws adjusting these exactly tallied, the constructors 
could know that they had got a level true to the loooth 
part of an inch. The work of adjustment alone occupied 
four and a half months, and it was possible to certify at 
the end of this period that there was no measurable depar- 
ture from a straight line. The extraordinary degree of 
exactness reached can be appreciated by considering the 
statement that one of the factors that had to be taken 



i86 All About Engineering 

into account in the levelling was the curvature of the 
earth's surface. 

All sorts of precautions had to be taken as regards the 
carriage running over the tank. It is no easy task to secure 
absolute uniformity of speed. Each wheel is furnished 
with its separate motor to drive it, and each had to be 
ground on its shaft to ensure a uniform diameter, the 
degree of accuracy guaranteed being a maximum varia- 
tion of 3-ioooths of an inch. Naturally, the carriage is fitted 
with all sorts of measuring instruments, and with special 
devices for starting and stopping. The power to drive it 
is derived from a battery of 55 cells, so arranged that 
extra cells can be switched in to ensure the current remain- 
ing constant while the carriage is getting up speed. 

The points I have mentioned about the tank are not 
those that strike the visitor. He is surprised rather by 
the immensity of the tank and by the ship models that, 
if he is fortunate, he sees in course of construction. I 
should like to be able to speak of tapering masts and trued- 
up rigging, but the ship models worked on at the tank 
are very different from those that you see in the shops. 
They don't carry masts, and, instead of being made of iron 
or wood, are built up out of paraffin wax. It makes a great 
difference to a ship's speed how her hull is constructed, 
and one of the chief problems to be determined by those 
in charge of the experimental tank is the precise behaviour 
of the different shaped models designed by naval archi- 
tects. When the question of the Olympic-Hawke collision 
arose, the problem was set to those in charge of the tank 
to determine to what degree such a force as suction existed 
between two passing vessels. 



Testing 187 

I am anxious that you should get a good idea of the 
variety of the work that has to be undertaken by such 
a laboratory as that at Bushy Park, and we will, therefore, 
go through a year's report of the different departments, 
referring to portions of the work carried on in each. Elec- 
trical work is given the place of honour in the report, and 
we note that the department is still busily engaged in the 
work of standardising, trying to eliminate possible causes 
of variations and error in one of the electrical machines. 
The Japanese Government, we see, have appealed for 
some accurate standards of electrical resistance, and the 
director explains how they have been manufactured. One 
of the problems before physicists almost since the earliest 
days when electricity was scientifically considered has been 
to get a standard electric cell — one, that is, that at any 
given moment can be used as a standard of electrical 
pressure or voltage — and in the course of the year in 
working at this problem, the department has kept 300 
of such cells under constant observation, and report with 
satisfaction that they remained true to the extent of one 
or two parts in 100,000. We will leave the department 
at that, contenting ourselves with the observation that 
a whole lot of similar work was in regular progress, and 
that it, hke the other departments, was in constant touch 
with German and American standard laboratories, the three 
laboratories giving a constant interchange of material. 

Electro-technics comes next on our list, and the first 
thing we notice is that this department, too, is striving 
after a satisfactory unit — that of hght. Not much interest 
in that, you may think. But let us leave the laboratory, 
and see what an accurate standard of light means. A few 



i88 All About Engineering 

years ago I was present at the birth of a new society, 
the Illuminating Engineering Society. It is a body founded 
by the amazing energy of Mr. Leon Gaster, and Mr. Gaster 
has again and again impressed upon me that the basis 
of the work that he and his society are able to do is that 
he has got a practical handy means of measuring the 
intensity of light in any part of a room, or mine, or factory. 
Mr. Gaster is an engineer, and does not pretend to work 
with the absolute degree of accuracy that is demanded 
for the theoretical purposes of physics, but all his work 
has to be based on the accurate investigations of the 
physicist. As a result of this power of easily measuring 
light, it has been shown that that terrible eye disease of 
miners, nystagmus, which is responsible in all probability 
for many of the mining disasters, owing to the miners being 
unable to recognise the first signs of danger, is due to 
deficient illumination in the mines. He and his friends 
have found, too, by measuring the light in the different 
factories, that deficient light is responsible for many of the 
terrible accidents we read of from time to time in the 
factories. By having a satisfactory means of telling people 
exactly what intensity of light they have in the various 
parts of their schools, he can inform the authorities when 
their school-rooms are such that the eyesight of the chil- 
dren is being ruined. These are but a few of the acti- 
vities of a society which depends ultimately for its effi- 
ciency on such accurate work as that which is being done 
at the National Physical Laboratory. And international 
standards are essential if the work of different countries 
is to be compared. 

Under the heading " Visibility of Lights," we come to 



Testing 189 

a very interesting piece of work. You have only to read 
the newspapers to hear of cases of colhsion at sea, where 
it has been shown that the lights of one or other of the 
vessels have not been visible until too late to avoid a 
collision. All sorts of interesting points have been deter- 
mined in connection with this research. It has been shown, 
for instance, that some of the red glasses used in ships' 
lanterns cut off the enormous majority of the light given 
by the burner, while others are efficient. It has been 
determined just how far off a light of a given power can 
be seen — an important point, you will agree, when I tell 
you that the Board of Trade regulations lay it down that 
a ship's lights are to be visible for a distance of at least 
two miles. The regulations of the different Hghts are 
similar, so I will quote the shortest of the regulations, 
which reads : "A steamship, when under weigh, shall 
carry : On the port side, a red light, so constructed as to 
show an unbroken light over an arc of the horizon of lo 
points of the compass, so fixed as to throw the light from 
right ahead to two points abaft the beam on the port 
side, and of such a character as to be visible at a distance 
of at least two miles." The investigations at the laboratory 
showed that in several cases the lights supplied commer- 
cially were not such as to satisfy these conditions as to 
visibility. Among many interesting results determined 
in connection with this piece of work were such facts as 
that the use of spectacles made it at times curiously diffi- 
cult to pick up very faint-coloured lights. The researchers 
also took great pains in determining details about the 
way in which a distant light is picked up more easily if 
it is looked at obliquely than if it is looked at direct. 



igo All About Engineering 

Most of us who have to pay the bills for electric light 
and heat in our houses have reason at times to dispute 
the accuracy of the meters registering the amount of 
electric current consumed, and in this department in the 
year in question many tests were undertaken to see how 
far properly made meters varied owing to the vibration 
of railway journeys and the different types of work that 
they have to perform. Various experiments were under- 
taken, also, with a view to procuring a more accurate 
measurement of heavy currents. 

In the chapter on cable-laying I shall point out 
that the first Atlantic cable failed after it had been in use 
for only a short time, owing to the breaking down of the 
insulating material in which the conducting wire was 
enclosed. A great many results on this subject have, of 
course, been obtained experimentally, but with a view 
to determining what would happen in the case of a very 
high voltage cable in New Zealand, where the cable would 
be subjected to severe strains of weather, an elaborate 
research was undertaken for this specific object, and a 
general research on the subject was also carried out for 
the Engineering Standards Committee. At the requests 
of manufacturers, too, the Laboratory carried out a series 
of tests on special kinds of aUoys ; and here I may remark 
that anyone who doubts the value of the work at the 
Laboratory is immediately answered by the fact that the 
authorities are continually being asked by a greater and 
greater number of manufacturers to undertake special 
investigations on their behalf. 

Leaving the department of electro-technics, we will 
go on to thermometry. Thermometry, with the high tern- 



Testing 191 

peratures in use at the Laboratory, is one of the most 
fascinating of the departments. Not content with measur- 
ing intense cold, the physicist insists on being able to get 
an accurate measurement of high temperatures. This is 
not the place to go into details of high temperature measure- 
ments, of how the temperature is gauged by the colour 
of a molten metal, or by the electric current caused by the 
heating of two metals with their ends in contact. We will 
only notice here that the idea was to try to get a gas 
thermometer that would register the enormous heat of 
1,500 degrees temperature on the centigrade scale of the ther- 
mometer, a heat, of course, far above that at which the glass 
used for ordinary temperatures would be a Uquid, some 
aspects of the problem being to get a transparent substance 
that could be made into tubes, that would keep the gas 
in and make it possible to see how it expanded and con- 
tracted under the influence of heat. The research led the 
investigators to a curious conclusion which they pubhshed 
at the Royal Society. They found that if they heated a 
carbon furnace to a very high temperature and had a 
brass water-cooled tube inside, an electric current of con- 
siderable amount was produced, and, tentatively, they 
made the inference that they had found a means of turning 
heat direct into electricity. It is too early as yet to say 
whether the discovery is of any practical importance, but 
it has, of course, long been a dream of engineers to turn 
heat direct into electricity without its being necessary 
to have recourse to the roundabout method of steam 
and dynamos. The department also occupied itself 
with the methods of determining the flash-point of illu- 
minating oils. It is work such as this that has made it 



192 All About Engineering 

a very uncommon thing to read of the terrible explosions 
that used to be so common with oil lamps. If a lamp 
upset in the old days — ^the accident happened sometimes 
without the lamp upsetting — it too often put the whole 
place ablaze, but regulations based on such experiments 
as these have been introduced which insist that the oils 
used in lamps shall have what is called a high flash- 
point — that is to say, that neither they nor their 
vapours shall take fire until the temperature reached is 
considerable. 

Few questions are more important in connection with 
our food supply than that of cold-storage. Powerful 
engines have to be employed to keep the plant going that 
supplies the cooling gases and liquids for the pipes, and 
obviously great economy can be effected if a means can 
be devised to prevent the heat of the outside air passing 
through the walls of the cooling chamber. One of the 
enterprising firms dealing with this class of work decided 
that enough was not known as to the power of such 
substances as coke, charcoal, slag-wool and so forth to 
keep out a flow of heat, and the Laboratory was invited 
to carry out a series of tests on this point. 

I have said so much in this chapter about the import- 
ance of measurement that you will not be surprised to 
hear that the Laboratory has a special department of 
metrology. Instead of going through their actual work, 
which includes, by the way, the testing of the taximeters 
on taxi-cabs, and, of course, involves work of scrupulous 
nicety, I will merely give you a single illustration of the 
extraordinary degree of accuracy to which the units of 
length; for instance, are constructed. The surfaces of 



Testing 193 

some of these measures are polished to such a supreme 
degree of accuracy, that when they are brought thoroughly 
into contact without there being the slightest layer of air 
in between them, it is a recognised fact that if they are 
pulled forcibly apart the metal itself will often break in 
preference to the measures parting at the original surfaces. 
You may be interested to know that the explanation of 
this is that the two surfaces have been brought so closely 
together that the particles or molecules of which the sub- 
stance is composed are able to exercise an attraction on 
one another, just as they do in an ordinary lump of 
material. It is an illustration of the force of cohesion, 
and if you come to think it over, you will realise that it 
is a very extraordinary force indeed that holds a lump 
of substance together instead of letting it fall apart like 
loose sand, the molecules, of course, being millions and 
millions of times smaller than the smallest grain of sand 
you can conceive. 

We will pass over the Optics Department, and content 
ourselves with a mention of the wonderful tide-predicting 
machine that, by a complicated system of wheels and cords, 
will predict for you the state of the tide at any port in 
the world you like to mention at any future date, and 
see what the Engineering Department of the Laboratory 
is occupied with. You will remember the terrible disaster 
of the Tay Bridge, where a gale of wind blew down a portion 
of the bridge, and a trainload of helpless passengers were 
hurled to their deaths. Well, one of the researches of the 
department has been to determine just what force the 
wind is able to effect on different types of structures. They 
have been working, too, to determine how the different 



194 AH About Engineering 

materials react to stresses of different direction and of 
high frequency. You all know that a possible accident to 
a bicycle — very rare now in these days of clever con- 
struction — ^is for the parts that have been welded together 
to come apart. Well, this happens with bigger things 
than bicycles, and the whole question of welded joints has 
been studied at the Laboratory. All such points have 
had to be considered as the size of the welded surfaces 
and the methods employed in welding, and the de- 
partment has expressed its opinion in the following 
terms : 

" The broad conclusion of the investigation is that in 
important work, where the failure of any particular welded 
joint may involve serious damage to the structure, the 
subjection of each joint to a proof-load is still desirable. 
Further, there appears to be no evidence that the want 
of uniformity in the material which is usual in the region 
of a welded joint is liable to cause failure of the joint 
under repeated applications of the load, provided the weld 
be originally sound." 

Now we come on to aeronautics. The lives of aviators 
are, to some extent, in the hands of the Bushey Park 
investigators. It has been their duty to plan experiments 
to determine what the forces are that act on various parts 
of the aeroplane wings, to find out by trails of smoke 
how the air flows round them, to learn what is the resist- 
ance of wires and ropes. They have placed models of diri- 
gibles in water, and seen how the water eddies round the 
surface just as the air eddies round the dirigible. The 
effect of different propellers has been studied with measur- 
ing instruments at work the whole time. Motors suitable 



Testing 195 

for dirigibles have been subjected to all sorts of trials ; 
the mechanical strength of the different fabrics used has 
been determined. Elaborate tests have been made, too, 
as to how far they allow hydrogen to leak through them, 
as to their capacity for absorbing water, their durabihty 
and weathering properties, their alteration on exposure 
to ultra-violet light, their properties as regards heat trans- 
mission, inflammability, and their behaviour towards ex- 
treme cold. Tests have also been made on the suitability 
of different kinds of material for the framework of airships 
and aeroplanes. 

Roads, too, have been the subject of investigation in 
the Engineering Department, the attention of the workers 
being directed, among other points, to mechanical tests on 
road materials, to the way in which the various materials 
wear away by rubbing on each other, to the influence of 
a falling ram that imitates the countless shocks delivered 
to roads by the pounding of horses' feet and by the wheels 
of vehicles, to the quahties of cementing material and to 
endurance tests on specimen roads. At the request of the 
engineers to the Road Board, a special series of tests was 
made on samples of pitch supplied to the Road Board 
specifications. 

We will conclude our visit to the Laboratory by a 
glance at the work they undertake in metallurgy and 
metallurgical chemistry. The development in alloys so 
closely concerns the engineer, and has been so astonish- 
ing in recent years, that it is impossible to forecast what 
intensely interesting results may not follow by further 
investigations on these lines, and numerous experiments 
have been conducted on alloys, especially with aluminium 



196 All About Engineering 

and copper, and with aluminium, copper and zinc. Special 
work has been done, too, on the effect of heating steel to 
high temperatures, on determining the melting point of 
iron, and on the effects that strain exercises on metals at 
high temperatures. It is only necessary to consider the 
various engines that are at work to realise the importance 
of this work and of another series of experiments con- 
ducted on the causes of brittleness in steel. In this research 
the singular conclusion appears to be justified that the 
brittleness may be due to the presence of carbon dioxide. 
The metallurgical chemists, in addition to other valuable 
work, were able to report the amazing and very significant 
conclusion that on exposing charcoal to a current of air 
containing 5 per cent, of sulphur dioxide, spontaneous 
combustion occurred even at the everyday tempera- 
ture of 64° Fahrenheit. The experiments — which were 
undertaken at the request of Lloyd's Register — show 
clearly the danger of fire involved in using this gas for 
disinfecting purposes in places where charcoal is used in 
the waUs. From this the workers passed to a study of the 
behaviour of decayed wood, but the experiments appear 
to indicate that this material is markedly less inflammable 
under these conditions than charcoal. 

In the preceding pages I have only been able to glance 
at a portion of the work that is undertaken yearly by this 
great Laboratory; and to indicate from another point of 
view the volume of work done, I am including a table 
showing the work done in the verification of various 
instruments in a single department. Physics. They 
are copied direct from the director's report for the year 
1911 : 



Testing 



197 



Comparison of Tests made During the Years 1909, 1910, 1911 
Physics Department 



Electrical Measurements 

1909 1910 



Condensers and Specific Indue 
tive Capacities . . 

Magnetic Permeability 
„ Hysteresis . . 



Ageing 



and 



Total Loss (Hysteresis 
Eddy Currents) . . 

Inductance Tests 

Standard Cells . . 

Telephone Cables and Loading 
Coils 

Tuning Forks . . 

Frequency Meter 

Wavemeter 

Miscellaneous , . 



7 
13 
17 



28 

9 

72 



18 



32 
10 

99 

2 
3 



1911 

32 
II 

25 

I 

84 

9 
100 



155 



172 



269 





Elecfrotechnics 






Resistance Coils 


42 


76 


162 


Resistance Boxes 


.. .. 76 


63 


125 


Testing Sets 


26 


45 


44 


Conductivity Tests 


53 


29 


54 



198 



All About Engineering 



1909 



1910 



1911 



Insulation Resistance 




86 


25 


63 


Dielectric Strength . 




82 


86 


252 


Ammeters 




• 313 


464 


521 


Voltmeters 




. 232 


372 


447 


Ohmmeters 




. 63 


54 


85 


Supply Meters 




• 331 


391 


280 


Potentiometers 




I 


10 


8 


Wattmeters 




34 


20 


20 


Galvanometers . . 




I 


4 


2 


Shunts . . 




3 


20 


41 


Primary Cells . . 




200 


93 


78 


Secondary Cells 




— 


9 


— 


Fuses . . 




• 777 


21 


— 


Resistance Alloys 




I 


4 


4 


Transformers . . 




2 


7 


4 


Switches and Circuit Breakers — 


I 


2 


Miscellaneous . . 


• 


5 
2.^2 


16 

8 ^i.8i( 


II 
5 2. 



•2,203 



Photometry 



Pentane Lamps 


3 


10 


3 


Incandescence Lamps 


. 895 


440 


886 


Arc Lamps 


3 


I 


•— 


Ships' Lamps 


— 


22 


27 


Photometers 


I 


— 


2 


Gas Burners . . 


II 


— 


— 


Miscellaneous 


oiq 


7 

48c 


2 
) 



920 



Testing 



199 



Thermometry 










1909 


1910 


1911 


High Range Thermometers . 




186 


140 


109 


Low Range ,, 




15 


83 


68 


Open Scale ,, 




51 


135 


150 


Flash-Point 




— 


— 


104 


Resistance ,, 




8 


7 


3 


Melting Points 




5 


— 


4 


Thermocouples 




12 


19 


19 


„ with Indicators 




3 


7 


10 


Pjnrometers 




55 


61 


84 


Heating Appliances . . 




2 


— 


— 


Flash-Point Apparatus 




13 


39 


27 


Miscellaneous . . 


Opt 


18 
368 

ics 


5 
496 


4 


Photographic Lenses . . 


. 


13 , 


4 


8 


,, Shutters 


. 


21 


13 


27 


Optical Constants 


. 


— 


— 


4 


Prisms . . 


. 


I 


— 


— 


Absorption Tests 


. 


8 


— 


8 


Trial Case Lenses 


. 


3,579 


5,285 


5,030 


Clinometers 


. 


3 


4 


28 


Prism Binoculars — Loss of Lig 


ht 


8 


— 


— 


Miscellaneous 


• 


3 
^3,636 


2 

5,308 


I 
■ 5 


M 


'etrology 






Line Standards and Scales . 








js 


Tapes and Wires 


19 


32 


I23 


Coefficients of Expansion 


. 


9 


32 


48 



582 



5,106 



200 



AH About Engineering 



1909 



1910 



1911 



End Gauges . , . . . . ^ 






''129 


Cylindrical Gauges 






185 


Screw Gauges, Taps, etc. 


y 865 


229 


197 


Gauges of Special Type 






2 


Templates (Sets) . . . . ^ 






^ 25 


Other Length Measurements 


— 


15 


89 


Micrometers, Callipers, etc. . . 


5 


5 


2 


Measuring Machines . . 


I 


2 


— 


Cathetometer 


— 


— 


I 


Lead Screw 


— 


— 


I 


Areameters 


— 


5 


6 


Gauging Instruments for Casks 


— 


— 


60 


Measures of Capacity (Glass 








Vessels, etc.) 


809 


61.8 


926 


Chemical Weights 


479 


878 I, 


205 


Densities 


20 


38 


27 


Artificial Ageing of Invar . . 


I 


2 


5 


Miscellaneous . . 


I 


4 


35 




2,209 


^1,860 — 


—2,974 



9,609 10,126 12,054 



Taximeter Testing {Metrology Department) 



Taximeters 

Taximeter Gear Boxes 
Taximeter Flexibles . . 



7,985 13,918 12,852 
2,180 4,445 4,811 
13 3 2 

— ^10,178 ^18,366 ^17,665 



19,787 28,492 29,719 



Testing 201 

Now that we have seen something of the work that is 
being undertaken at the National Physical Laboratory, I 
propose to conclude this chapter with a short account of 
a new method of testing engineering materials that is, 
I think, unsurpassed for ingenuity and beauty. You will 
have realised by now that when an engineer sets out to 
design a structure, it is very necessary for him to have 
a clear idea of the exact way in which strain will be brought 
to bear on it, and of the amount of the strains and stresses 
that it will have to support. Mathematical calculation and 
the results of physical research help him in his task, but 
cases from time to time arise where the conditions of the 
problem are so complex as almost, if not quite, to defy 
mathematical analysis. Obviously, it would be of enor- 
mous assistance to him if he could have a transparent 
model so constructed that by looking at it he could see 
the distribution of the stresses and strains. Many attempts 
have been made with this object, and models have before 
now been constructed in indiarubber, jellies and such-like 
substances, which, by yielding in those places where the 
strain is greatest, inform the engineer what parts of his 
structure he must be at pains to strengthen. 

Professor E. G. Coker, the Professor of Mechanical 
Engineering in the City and Guilds of London Technical 
College, Finsbury, may fairly claim to have done a great 
service for engineering by his researches on the behaviour 
of transparent models to beams of polarised light as they 
are passed through it. The transparent substance he uses 
is xylonite ; it looks very like sheets of talc, or, if you 
are not familiar with that material, you will get a fair idea 
of its appearance by regarding it as similar to the sheets 



202 All About Engineering 

of horn that you see let into the hoods of motor-cars. As a 
matter of fact, it is a preparation of nitro-cellulose. Out 
of this he constructs models, as, for instance, wheels, springs, 
hooks, nuts and screws, girders, chains, pillars and so 
forth. 

Now light, as you may know, is composed of waves 
coming through the ether at enormous speeds. The waves 
are quite unlike those of the sea, and if you want to try 
and form a picture of them, you would have to think of 
them as waves moving, say, from east to west, while the 
crests oscillated to and fro in the directions north and 
south. This would form a very imperfect picture of what 
occurs, for the waves of light are also moving in all sorts 
of planes. Means have been found, however, to polarise 
it — that is to say, to get rid of all waves except those moving 
in one special plane. To describe polarised light more 
accurately would involve our going into the theory of light 
a good deal more deeply than I care to do or than you 
would care to follow me, and I want you to accept my 
statement that with light properly polarised it is only 
necessary to send it through such a transparent substance 
as xylonite for its wave length to be altered, wherever the 
xylonite is strained, and for the model to appear a verit- 
able blaze of colour. That, you might imagine, is not very 
much good, but when I tell you that Professor Coker can 
tell from the different colours exactly the extent of the 
force that is tending to pull any portion of his xylonite 
apart, or that is tending to compress it, you will easily 
realise the value of the method. The editors of Engineer- 
ing have given me leave to reproduce a few of the coloured 
plates used to illustrate an article written by Professor 




< 

^ fa 

as ^ 

o ■< 

H 3 

M - 

O ^ 

Q '^ 

O ^ 

X 3 

H ■? 

I* 
z 



Testing 203 

Coker for that journal in January, 1911, and these will 
show you the sort of appearance that you see on the 
screen when polarised light is passed through the models. 
The pictures fall far short of the actual beauty of the 
demonstration. I have had the advantage of seeing it 
both when Professor Coker demonstrated it at the Royal 
Institution and when he demonstrated it before the 
Optical Convention. The first thing one sees is a plain 
image of the wheel, or hook, or beam, or whatever he is 
showing. Then he starts putting on the pressure, and the 
models begin to develop all sorts of beautiful colour, changes 
occurring as the stresses vary. From the plates I have 
reproduced you will see for yourself how extraordinarily 
unequal the distribution of pressure is in such a simple 
case as that of a mere beam. Then, too, when you make 
a notch in it the whole picture alters, as you can see from 
the plate. The ordinary bolt nut and its screws are far 
from presenting the simple problem you might imagine 
them to do. There is a very complex distribution of forces, 
too, about a pillar that is bearing a load or the springs 
of a locomotive. 

Many of you, I am afraid, may not have the oppor- 
tunity for some time of seeing these experiments for your- 
selves, for in science, as in other departments of life, ideas 
travel slowly ; but you will find that you can get a very 
fair idea of the play of the colours obtained with these 
models if you ask a geologist to let you see under his 
microscope a rock-section illuminated by polarised light. 

After illustrating the application of his work to engi- 
neering problems. Professor Coker has appraised their 
value as a means of education, and has written : 



204 All About Engineering 

" In addition to their value for experimental investiga- 
tions, optical methods appear to have a certain amount of 
value for educational work. It is probably a very common 
experience that engineering students rarely show the same 
degree of enthusiasm for the study of the theory of elasticity 
as they do for the study of other branches of science, 
such as heat engines, for example. It is difficult to realise 
what is the internal condition of beams, shafts and the 
like when they are bent, twisted, or otherwise stressed ; 
and the average student, especially if he comes direct 
from school, does not readily grasp the meanings of the 
symbols he uses, or the significance of the formulas he 
obtains, because of lack of illustrations of the nature of 
internal stress. With a limited amount of experience, it 
seems quite safe to say that the pictures which optical 
experiments present to the eye afford a measure of help 
to students, whether they are intelligent workmen or the 
more systematically trained students of an engineering 
college." 



CHAPTER XIV 

STEEL — THE WORK OF THE FOUNDRY — HOW A COMMON FILE 
IS MANUFACTURED 

In writing of steel it is impossible altogether to escape 
from the charge that one is commonplace. It is true, 
fundamentally true, that we are living in the steel age, 
and that it is steel that has made our civilisation possible ; 
there are few among us who have not made this observa- 
tion for ourselves, and none, I should imagine, who 
have not heard it made. In a book of this sort, however, 
the fact is brought vividly before you, for I should think 
there is not a chapter here in connection with which steel 
is not the leading feature. 

Familiar as steel is to all of us, there is no one who has 
yet been able to find a definition to cover it exactly, though 
hundreds of experts have attempted to do so. For our 
purposes, however, it will be sufficient if we realise that 
steel is iron mixed with carbon, tempered to a certain 
degree of hardness. It is an easy matter to write " tem- 
pered to a certain degree of hardness," but do any of us, 
I wonder, realise the amazing range of the properties of 
steel ? You get it sometimes so brittle that it will snap 
at the slightest provocation ; at others so supple that it 
will buckle under its own weight. One is conscious that 
it can be springy and robust, for how could it otherwise 
bear the innumerable strains it is subjected to when 

205 



2o6 All About Engineering 

designed as springs for carts, and motor-cars and railway 
trains ? It may be so pliant that it can be bent about 
in wire, or so keen that it will preserve its cutting 
edge, even though it is at a red heat. It is equally 
adapted for the crude-edge pick of the miner, for the 
grindstone edge of the backwoodman's axe, or for the 
amazing keenness of edge that can be put on the surgeon's 
knife. These various properties depend partly on the 
nature of the tempering — that is, of the way in which the 
steel has been allowed to cool, and partly on the sub- 
stances with which the iron in it has been combined, such, 
for instance, as carbon, manganese, tungsten, chromium, 
and nickel. 

Let me try to sketch briefly the processes to which iron 
must be subjected before it reaches the final stage of 
manufacture. There is little romance usually about the 
mining of its ore, for as often as not it can be dug in surface 
mines. Anyway, we start with it packed with its various 
impurities in railway wagons to go off to the foundry. 
A marvellous place the foundry is, too ! Iron ore and lime 
and coal are all tipped together into an enormous furnace, 
into which a miniature whirlwind can be blown, the object 
being to get such a high temperature as wiU burn out the 
impurities from the molten ore. The coal supplies the 
necessary heat, the lime seizes hold of the silica that is 
present, and at the end you have a furious white-hot 
furnace covered by scum, the lime and the silica and the 
earth portions all rising to the top of this monster kiln, 
while the iron is boiling furiously below. When the process 
is at an end, the furnace doors are opened, and the iron 
pours out into sand moulds placed ready to receive it. 




PJu'to : Undei-iLVod &- Under-L'Ood 

STEEL WORKS AGLOW WITH HOT METAL 



Steel 207 

the heat of it being such that it is only from a distance 
that you can gaze on its dazzling surface. Like most first 
processes, the iron — pig-iron it is called — is a crude enough 
substance now that we have got it, and it is taken away 
to another furnace, heated again to a white heat, and then 
" puddled " or stirred by great iron bars to rid it still 
further of its carbon and other impurities. In the manu- 
facture of steel, as in all manufactures, we really come 
back to the same principle — " take a clean test-tube." If 
you are to get a definite product, you must have a pure 
substance to start with. In the wrought iron, as the iron 
when it has been puddled is called, you have the raw 
material of steel ; in fact, so difficult is it entirely to 
eliminate carbon from iron that there is chemically no 
difference between wrought iron and mild steel. Steel 
commercially known as such contains anything from '3 per 
cent, to 2"2 per cent, of carbon, and then by a curious 
irony of nomenclature, if the carbon content rises further, 
it is known as cast iron. 

Henry Bessemer is the father of modern steel manu- 
facture. Having made the discovery that an intense cold 
blast driven through molten pig-iron was most successful 
in producing steel, he proceeded forthwith to exploit his 
discovery, and thereby he laid the foundation of the great- 
ness of Sheffield steel. His chief difficulty was with phos- 
phorus, and when this, a few years later, had been sur- 
mounted by lining the furnace with lime, which combined 
with the phosphorus, forming incidentally a valuable 
manure, the essentials of steel manufacture had been 
completed. 

It is an amazing fact how difficult it is for a new idea 



2o8 All About Engineering 

to force its way to the front. I have a theory that I would 
not like you to press too far that the entry of a new idea 
gives the brain of most of us the same sort of pain that 
we feel on the cutting of a tooth ; whereas, we welcome the 
various modifications of an old idea with the readiness 
with which we like to exercise our healthy muscles. Bessemer 
found this to his cost. The steel rails he manufactured 
were more expensive, but they had far more wear in them 
than the old iron rails, and the railway companies would 
not adopt them for the ridiculous reason that the engine 
wheels would be unable to grip them. The platelayers 
solved the difficulty, for the Sheffield firm that had adopted 
Bessemer's process induced them to replace the ordinary 
company's rails with Bessemer rails, and when the engi- 
neers had the success of the new rail thus demonstrated 
to them, they gladly capitulated. It is amazing, though, 
the difficulty that an inventor meets with, even though 
he has an invention that wiU save the user money. 

I have tried in the pictures with which this chapter is 
accompanied to give you some conception of the wonderful 
processes necessary in the manufacture of steel, but you 
will naturally wonder how it is that men can approach 
sufficiently near to such vast blocks of white-hot steel 
as are necessary for the armoured warships, for instance. 
The answer to your question is that no man ever does go 
near them, even when they are red hot. What happens is 
that the white-hot casting is brought automatically on to 
a floor covered with rollers that can move in different 
directions. A man presses one lever and then another, 
and the sheet of dazzling steel moves this way or that to 
the rollers that are waiting to press it into shape. It is a 



Steel 209 

triumph of human ingenuity, and the handhng of the 
hot steel by the rollers looks for all the world as if the 
work was being done by a monster human hand. 

Or, take again the making of steel wire. The big lump 
of metal comes to the rolling mills scorching hot : the 
first of the sets of rollers takes it in hand, drags it through 
until it appears doubled in length ; then its end is put 
into the second set of rollers that again double its length, 
the whole being done at a lightning speed, the steel 
retaining its high temperature owing to the vast friction 
to which it is subjected. The men in this department need 
to have all their wits about them, for, as the iron wire 
elongates, it travels at a tremendous rate of speed, and 
the men at the end where it comes out must catch it at 
once and get it into the rollers again with no delay, or the 
work would be clogged, and the temperature of the steel 
would fall too low for the rollers to be able to cope 
with it. When the wire goes through for the last time, a 
little donkey engine deals with it. As the wire comes out 
like a furiously darting snake of fire, its end is delivered 
to the drum on the donkey engine, which at once clatters 
furiously and gathers up the slack, so that within a second 
or two of the ribbon of steel having left the roller, it is 
neatly coiled ready to be handed on to the next depart- 
ment. 

To get an idea of the way in which steel is handled, 
you need yourself to go over a steel foundry, but it may 
help you to realise the enormous forces that have to be 
handled when I tell you that the governors of the powerful 
engines that drive the rolling mills, which can remain 
at a fairly acute angle while the rolling is in progress, 

o 



210 All About Engineering 

stretch out taut and rigid the moment the steel has 
escaped from the rolls. 

Innumerable descriptions have been written of the 
grander steel operations, but, as all descriptions must do, 
they have, I think, failed to realise more than a tithe of 
the interest. I propose, therefore, to conclude this chapter 
in a rather different way from the usual, and to try to 
indicate to you the extraordinary complexity of the pro- 
cesses that have to be gone through to get so ordinary a 
steel article as a common file. 

When the crude iron ore comes out of the earth, it 
has first to be taken where it is roughly freed from earthy 
matter and melted down into what are known as pigs. The 
pigs are taken to the steel foundry, where, by special pro- 
cesses, the carbon is taken out of the brittle steel and the 
file-maker is able to start with the raw material that he 
speaks of as biUets. The great factor in steel production 
is to have exactly the requisite admixture of carbon, and 
to secure this the file-maker has to melt his steel afresh. 
For his crucible he uses china clay, and in a tool-maker's 
factory it is one man's duty to spend his whole Hfe tread- 
ing the soaking china clay, for if the very smallest air- 
bubble is left in the clay when the crucible is heated to the 
intense temperature required, the bubble swells and shatters 
the crucible. The crucible is placed in the furnace, and then 
if it withstands the heat, we come to that aspect of the 
process that forces out of us an admiration for the amazing 
adaptability of man. There is one man whose duty it is 
to lower into the crucible the mix, as it is called, that 
contains the steel in the exact proportions that are required 
for the making of the file. It sounds no great feat perhaps, 



Steel 



211 



but when the time comes for him to have to remove the 
crucible from the furnace, he has to wrap his Hmbs in 
sacking and to walk knee-deep into water. Armed in this 
way as a protection from the heat, he removes again the 
top of the furnace, stands over its fiercely blazing depths, 
and with a pair of long tongs he removes the crucible with 
its white-hot metal from the furnace, where it has been 
smelting for three to four hours. There is nothing particular 
in that you may think, but you must remember that a 
single mistake, and the half-hundredweight of steel — no 
light weight, by the way, to lift — may be spoilt and lost, for 
the extraordinary thing about steel at this high temperature 
is that it can make its way where so subtle a substance as 
water would be unable to penetrate. But what of the man ? 
In the short time it has taken him to lift out the crucible 
his soaking wet sacking has been dried to the state of 
tinder, and, indeed, as likely as not, is already smouldering. 
The crucible's load is delivered into a mould, and is cast as 
an ingot, and it is again a special man's duty to break off 
the ingot just that upper portion of the steel that contains 
air bubbles, for if once an air bubble gets past this stage, 
it will never again be eliminated from the steel. The ingot 
passes to the cogging mill, where it is cogged down to pieces 
of one and a half to two inches square. But our file, 
as we will now call it, has to go to the forger, who ham- 
mers it into shape and tapers the end, and forges on to 
it the tang that will eventually fit it to the handle. When 
the forger has done with it, he passes it on to the 
anneahng furnace. 

Annealing is a process that runs so thoroughly through 
engineering, that it is worth explaining. If a substance 



212 All About Engineering 

is allowed to cool quickly, it is unable, as it contracts, to 
do so without it being left badly strained, and if we want 
to have a substance unstrained after it has been heated, it is 
necessary to allow it a very long time to cool — four to eight 
hours in the case of our file — in order that the whole process 
may go on with absolute uniformity. When our file has cooled 
for eight hours, and is soft, it goes to the grinding shop, where 
it is ground bright all over and prepared for the file-cutting 
machine. The method of cutting these notches is beautiful 
from its simplicity. The file is drawn under the point of 
the chisel-shod hammer, that is moving up and down 
against heavy springs so rapidly, that for the finer types 
of file it is impossible for the eye to see that any motion 
is taking place. Even for a 14-inch file, when there are 
nineteen teeth to the inch, the hammer strikes its blows at 
the rate of 450 blows to the minute. If you look at a file 
you will notice that the cuts run crossways, the cut first 
made being curiously enough known as the over cut, while 
the cut made second is known as the up cut. 

The file is far from being finished yet, for, as you will 
remember, it was specially softened so that the chisel- 
shod hammer might do its work, and it now has to go to 
another department, where it is dipped in molten lead. 
Molten lead is used for this, as it gives the exact temperature 
wanted. The man in charge takes it from the lead and 
plunges it into brine, the sudden chill makes it contract 
unequally, and while it is still hot the man bends it straight 
again across two hickory bars that run across the brine 
tank, and so the process continues, chilling and bending, 
chilling and bending until a straight, hardened file is the 
result. The work requires a high order of skill and superb 



Steel 213 

judgment, for some of the fancy files now in use will 
whip into a sickle shape as soon as they start to take the 
chill, and it is only in the early stages while they are still 
hot that they can be bent back, for the file buys its hard- 
ness at the expense of being brittle. As the file was passing 
along the machine that cuts the teeth, the speed was so 
enormous that the chisel was never able to get out of the 
cut quite in time, and if we were to look at the teeth we 
should notice that they were all bent over a little at the 
top. This throwover, as it is called, has to be removed, 
and so the file passes to a place where it is subjected to a 
violent blast of steam and sand. This removes the throw- 
over, sharpens the teeth, and gives to the file its beautiful 
grey finish. Then the scourer takes it in hand, and he 
scrubs it with oiled brushes, and so it comes to the file 
manager to stand its trial. Each file is " proved " inde- 
pendently. The manager has before him a lot of strips 
of steel so tempered that the file should be able to cut 
them. If, as the steel is carried across the file, a bright 
streak is left on the file, the prover knows that it is not up 
to standard hardness, and back it has to go to the works 
to be treated afresh. It is only when the file manager has 
passed it that it can be packed in a bundle with the rest 
and sent out to do its work in the world. 

The story of the common file should give you a fair 
idea of the vast industries built up on steel, and the amaz- 
ing amount of work that this steel industry gives to this 
country. If you feel doubtful of the truth of this, just 
cast your mind over the chapters of this book, and remember 
that every steel substance mentioned in it has had to go 
through a whole chain of similar processes. Or take a single 



214 All About Engineering 

day in your life, considering it from beginning to end, and 
you will be astonished when you realise how intimately, 
both directly and indirectly, you are bound up with the 
manufacture of steel. Bearing this in mind, and remember- 
ing that iron and steel have to be smelted with coal, I will 
quote to you in conclusion a most suggestive passage 
from Professor John Perry's lecture on " Spinning Tops," 
and leave you to draw your own conclusions as to the 
other ways in which we are making use of our coal 
reserves : 

" Imagine the following question set in a school examina- 
tion paper of 2090 a.d. : ' Can you account for the crass 
ignorance of our forefathers in not being able to see from 
England what their friends were doing in Australia ? ' Or 
this : ' Messages are being received every minute from 
our friends on the planet Mars, and are now being answered : 
how do you account for our ancestors being utterly ignorant 
that these messages were occasionally sent to them ? ' Or 
this : * What metal is as strong compared with steel as 
steel is compared with lead ? And explain why the dis- 
covery of it was not made in Sheffield.' 

" But there is one question that our descendants will 
never ask in accents of jocularity, for to their bitter sorrow 
every man, woman and child of them will know the answer, 
and that question is this : 'If our ancestors, in the matter 
of coal economy, were not quite as ignorant as a baby 
who takes a penny as equivalent for a half-crown, why 
did they waste our coal ? Why did they destroy what 
never can be replaced ? ' 

" We look on Nature now in an utterly different way, 
with a great deal more knowledge, with a great deal more 



Steel 215 

reverence, and with much less unreasoning superstitious 
fear. And what we are to the people of 3,000 years ago, 
so will be the people of 100 years hence to us ; for indeed 
the acceleration of the rate of progress in science is itself 
accelerating. The army of scientific workers gets larger 
and larger every day, and it is my belief that every unit 
of the population will be a scientific worker before long. 
And so we are gradually making time and space yield to 
us and obey us. But just think of it ! Of all the discoveries 
of the next 100 years ; the things that are unknown to us, 
but which will be so well known to our descendants that 
they will sneer at us as utterly ignorant, because these 
things will seem to them such self-evident facts ; I say, of 
all these things, if one of us to-morrow discovered one of 
them, he would be regarded as a great discoverer. And 
yet the children of 100 years hence will know it ; it will 
be brought home to them, perhaps at every footfall, at 
the flapping of every coat-tail." 



CHAPTER XV 

BRIDGE-BUILDING — ^THE FORTH BRIDGE — THE TAY BRIDGE 
— ^THE BRIDGE ACROSS THE MENAI STRAITS — THE BROOK- 
LYN BRIDGE — TRANSPORTER AND SWING BRIDGES — 
TRANSMARINE BRIDGES — ^A WONDERFUL FEAT 

It depends, no doubt, on one's special point of view, what 
one considers as the most marvellous type of engineering 
work, but it would be an easy matter to make out a good 
case to show that the work of the bridge-builder takes 
precedence over that of most other types of engineering 
construction. The bridge, like the road, is with us, no 
matter where we go, and there are few of us who have 
not, even in our greenest childhood, had experience of floods 
and listened somewhat awestruck, but hoping for the 
best — which was what our elders would have regarded as 
the worst — that the forces of Nature would triumph over 
the ingenuity of man, and that the little bridge over our 
local stream would be swept away in the fury of the tur- 
bulent yellow waters. For then we should have been able 
to watch the actual construction of a bridge. There is one 
man and one man only who, as yet, has written the story 
of bridge-building, and that is Mr. Rudyard Kipling. The 
account appears under the title " The Bridge-Builders," 
in " The Day's Work," and if you have not read it, you 
should do so without delay, for by his amazing genius 
Mr. Kipling has realised in it the problems with which 

216 




o 



.^ 



Stereograph copyright, U7iae7iL^?d •:- L'-r.dt rwood, I .■ ; ■ 

A BRIDGE OF ONE RAW HIDE ROPE AT URI, INDIA 

This bridge is not used by tourists bound for the capital, but is only for 
local traffic. The rope of twisted raw hide is about an inch thick. A 
V-shaped yoke of wood is placed over this, with loops of rope extending 
from each of the arms of the yoke in which the traveller sets his legs as 
if they were stirrups. A light line attached to the yoke or saddle is being 
pulled this way so as to haul the passenger across. The ropes of braided 
twigs seen in the distance are the remains of an older bridge now out 
of repair 



Bridge-Building 217 

every bridge-builder from time immemorial has had to 
grapple. There are few engineering works where man is so 
forced into direct and personal conflict with Nature as he 
is when he tries to bridge one of the great gaps that Nature 
has placed as an obstacle in his path. 

The art of bridge-building would require a whole ency- 
clopaedia to do it justice, and when the encyclopaedia had 
been duly written and published, only a month or two 
would have elapsed when Nature would fling at us a new 
problem with fresh conditions to exercise the ingenuity of 
the engineer to try and overcome them. 

To me the Forth Bridge is the bridge of all others, for, 
I remember, years ago, when the bridge was still a structure 
for the world to wonder at, how I walked out from Edin- 
burgh to see it, having only just time to get to the top 
of the hill that gives you a glimpse of the structure, and 
then hurrjdng back across all the intervening miles to get 
into Edinburgh before dark. And the Forth Bridge still 
remains one of the great engineering feats of the world. 
I have before me now one of those curiously interesting 
books that are occasionally brought out on the completion 
of great engineering works, written by one of those who 
were concerned in its accomplishment, and lavishly illus- 
trated with drawings, showing the work in the various 
stages through which it passed.* The bridge was built 
under the shadow of the catastrophe in which the Tay 
Bridge was wrecked. What was the problem to be solved ? 
The Forth carried a vast quantity of shipping on its waters, 
and the free passage of this could not be impeded ; it is 
over a mile wide at the point selected for the crossing, and 

* " The Forth Bridge in its Various Stages of Construction, and Com- 
pared with the Most Notable Bridges of the World." By Philip Phillips. 



2i8 All About Engineering 

some 1,760 feet from the north side there is an island 
with a deep channel on either side of it. The width of these 
channels was a third of a mile each, and so it was necessary 
that each of the main spans should be of this gigantic 
length. The advantages of a bridge across the Forth can 
easily be gathered from the statement that to travel from 
Edinburgh to Burntisland, two places about 8 miles distant 
apart, necessitated a railway journey of some 80 miles. 

The building of the bridge was not accomplished with- 
out some hairbreadth escapes. Thus, there was an instance 
of a man trusting himself at a height of 100 feet above 
the water by grasping a single rope. The cold was such 
that his grasp slipped, and he fell headlong into the water, 
being fortunately picked up alive. On another occasion, 
a spanner fell a distance of upwards of 300 feet. In its 
passage it knocked off a man's cap, and fell on the stage 
at his feet, passing clean through a 4-inch plank. Many 
of the accidents occurred through carelessness. Thus, 
some of the boys engaged were seen jumping from plank 
to plank in the upper works, regardless of the sheer dis- 
tance below them, and a case worthy of mention is that 
of two men whose intention it was to cover up a hole with 
planks. In carrpng material for the purpose, one of them 
walked backwards into the very hole he was about to 
cover. 

The Forth Bridge is built on the cantilever principle. 
It is enough for our purpose if we realise that by the canti- 
lever principle is meant a type of construction where from 
a central portion the bridge springs out in both directions 
so that the weight on one side balances that on the 
other, and consequently the whole weight of the bridge 



Bridge-Building 219 

itself and any traffic it may be carr5dng is borne directly 
on the central support. 

As the illustration shows you, there are three of these 
great cantilever systems in the Forth Bridge. The first 
essential, obviously, was to get a secure foundation for the 
piers that were to carry all this vast weight, and as the 
principle of building piers under water is more or less uni- 
form, and as consequently the work has frequently to be 
performed by engineers, we may as well see how it is done. 
While divers are amazingly clever at their work, it is almost 
invariably necessary that an under-water foundation should 
be excavated in the dry, and the simplest way of effecting 
this is by making what engineers call a coffer-dam. In the 
case of the Forth Bridge, they did it where the water was 
fairly shallow by driving into the ground a great circle 
of heavy piles and putting clay between them. Large 
beams were stretched in all directions in the circle thus 
formed to prevent the pressure of the water breaking down 
the paUsade. Then the pumps were got to work, and as the 
clay prevented the water forcing its way between the piles 
an area of land sufficiently dry to enable men securely 
to dig the foundations was laid bare. It was no light job 
digging down for the foundations of the Forth Bridge. 
They were sunk altogether a distance of 35 feet below 
high water, and then the engineers covered the bottom 
with a few feet of concrete, on which they constructed 
their masonry piers. 

This part of the work the engineers regarded as rela- 
tively simple, and it was only what they spoke of as the 
pneumatic process that gave them any real anxiety. Some 
of the piers off the island in the middle and on the Queens- 



220 All About Engineering 

ferry side had to be set up in comparatively deep water, 
and the piers in question are not the size that even a 
Samson could clasp in his arms. Each of them was 70 feet 
in diameter, and then tapered till at the top it was 49 feet 
across. In one of them special difficulties were encountered, 
but I think we shall see that the difficulties in the work 
of the ordinary piers were quite great enough for us to be 
content to say little about that. 

In order to get dry land for excavation, caissons had 
to be used. The simplest way of getting an idea of what 
a caisson is, is to look on it as a great gasometer, but with- 
out the gasometer's weights and chains. These were built 
on the shore in cradles so that they could be launched into 
the sea just as a ship is launched. For the most part, they 
were made of wrought iron, but the bottom cutting edge, 
where, of course, the diameter had to be 70 feet, was of 
steel. Seven feet from the bottom of the caisson, there 
was a partition running right across the caisson, so that the 
lower portion could be made air-tight, and men could use 
it as a working chamber. On the top of the roof of this 
working chamber, the caisson had an inner as well as an 
outer skin, there being a space of about 7 feet between 
the two, and this space was divided into independent 
chambers, any one of which could be filled with concrete, 
so as to bring special weight to bear on any part of the 
cutting edge that happened to come against any specially 
hard substance. You have probably by now jumped to 
the right conclusion that the caissons were lowered into the 
river-bed, where the foundations were required, and served 
instead of coffer-dams. We will pass on now to see how 
those caissons were used. 



Bridge-Building 221 

If you had been present at the Forth on the 26th of 
May, 1884, you would have witnessed an interesting sight, 
and been in good company, too, for the Lord High Com- 
missioner and the Countess of Aberdeen were there. Tower- 
ing up above the ways stood one of those great caissons ready 
to be launched. An hydraulic ram set the mass into motion 
and it ghded into the water as if it had been a ship, without 
a hitch. To complete the illusion, there were several people 
on board, and as soon as the launching had been completed, 
steel hawsers were attached to drag the unwieldy craft 
into position. And then it looked as if it were going to 
capsize, for suddenly it took a violent list, owing to the 
lower chamber being fiUed with air. Fortunately, however, 
the air got free by discharging itself under the lower edge 
and the caisson righted, having given its designers a very 
bad quarter of an hour, however, while it was doing so. 

Now we must suppose the caisson is in position, and its 
top, you must remember, will always be above sea-level. 
A start is made to force it to the bottom by putting in 
heavy weights. The caissons used for the Forth Bridge 
each weighed 400 tons, and when they were completely 
loaded, weighed 15,000 tons. With the gradual increase 
in weight the caisson would sink until its lower cutting edge 
reached the bottom of the sea-bed. The lower chamber 
now would be partly full of water and air-pumps would be 
got to work, until the compressed air had driven the water 
completely out of the chamber, so that if we were to 
put ourselves in imagination at the top of one of the 
caissons we should find ourselves looking down on the 
interior of an enormous tub, and should know that 
the floor of the tub was at the same time the roof 



222 All About Engineering 

of a great air space 70 feet in diameter and 7 feet 
deep. Suppose we wanted to go into this air chamber, we 
should clamber down the side of the caisson, a pretty long 
steep climb, and we should then be standing by one 
of the air locks. It is an easy matter for us to see what 
an air lock is in principle. We shall have in front of us a 
couple of stout iron doors opening inwards, and as we pass 
through into a little room and try the doors on the other 
side which will open outwards into the chamber below, we 
shaU find that they are fast shut. Meanwhile our guide 
will have closed the doors through which we have come, 
we shall hear a hissing sound, for he has put our Uttle room 
in connection with the air-pumps, and if we happen to have 
a barometer with us, we shaU see that the mercury is running 
up to the top of the tube. Let us try those inner doors 
again, just as you may have seen the men at the dock gates 
trying to move the gates when they see that the level in 
the lock and the level outside are the same. They move 
quite easily now, because the air pressure in our room has 
been made the same as that in the space where the men 
are working. An air-lock, in fact, operates just on the same 
principle as a water-lock. 

What a sight this space into which we have got is to 
look at ! 

There are brilliant lights hanging from the roof, 
hosts of workmen burrowing into the sea-bed, mechanical 
diggers tearing up their loads, trolleys taking the rock 
and stone away to the tubes by which the material will 
be dragged by cranes to the surface, and rock drills 
battering the rock face, and, if we could only see it, the 
great caisson itself slowly lowering its way deeper and 



Bridge-Building 223 

deeper beneath the surface of the water. If we came back 
a few months later, when the excavation was finished, it 
would be a very different sight we should be looking at. 
There would be no need now for the air-lock, for the caisson 
would have long ago got firmly into its bed, and we should 
be looking at the masons constructing the great pile which 
is to carry one of the monster piers. 

Most of the work connected with the caissons was 
carried out without a hitch, but in one instance an unlucky 
caisson did half -capsize after it got into place, and gave 
the engineers eleven months' hard work to get it back 
into position. One of the most novel incidents connected 
with the work occurred before one of the caissons had 
reached the sea-bed. Seeing the rays of light coming from 
beneath the cutting edge a diver started to explore, and 
suddenly walked beneath this edge, startling all those who 
were at work there ; and a thing that always surprised 
those who visited the compressed-air chamber was that 
if they lighted a match, and blew it out, it always lighted 
itself again. They were also surprised at finding that in the 
compressed air they were unable to whistle. 

As regards the construction of the bridge itself, it is 
necessary to remember that the great spans had to be 
built out all the time equally from side to side, so that 
the balance of the structure should be continually main- 
tained. As you know, the bridge is built of great iron 
tubes. These reached the engineers just as they had left the 
rolling mills in the form of plates. Each plate had to be 
put in a gas furnace where its temperature was raised 
to a dull red heat. Hydraulic cranes lifted them to a giant 
press that could exert a pressure of i,ooo tons, and they 



224 All About Engineering 

were then squeezed into shape, being pressed again when 
they were cold, as, despite all precautions, it was found that 
they altered a little in shape as they cooled. The amount 
of rivetting that had to be done was stupendous. It is esti- 
mated that the bridge ate up no fewer than 5,000,000 
rivets, and for this, of course, 10,000,000 holes had to be 
drilled, for the conditions of the work made it unwise 
to punch the holes. Hydraulic power was used for press- 
ing home the rivets, and by means of a pressure multiplier 
3 tons to the square inch was brought to bear on the rivets. 
If I attempted to deal with all the many ingenious 
contrivances employed in building the bridge, we should 
have to stray into many technicalities, and, moreover, we 
should have no room left to speak of other wonderful 
bridges, so I will content myself with quoting a few of 
the chief dimensions of the Forth Bridge : — 

Total length over i| miles 

Cantilever arms . . . . . . 680 feet 

Central girder . . . . . . 350 ,, 

Depth over piers . . . . . . 342 „ 

Diameter of largest tubes . . 12 ,, 

Total amount of steel in bridge over 50,000 tons 

Wind pressure allowed for . . 56 lbs. per square foot 

Dead weight on a single circular 

pier . . . . . . . . 16,000 tons 

Miles of steel plate used for tubes over 40 miles 

Total contraction and expansion 
allowed for changes of tem- 
perature . . . . . . 6-7 feet 

Largest number of men employed 

at one time . . . . . . Between 4,000 and 5,000 



Bridge Building 225 

For many long years the Tay Bridge will be associated 
in our memories with a terrible disaster, a disaster that 
had a great deal to do with the form ultimately decided 
on for the Forth Bridge, The difficulties in its construction 
depended more on the magnitude of the work than upon 
the application of any new principles, though the rapid flow 
of the waters of the Tay at times caused the engineers con- 
siderable anxiety. The cost of the bridge was ;^i3o,ooo, 
and though royal assent was given to the Bill promoting 
it in July, 1870, it was not until September, 1877, that the 
first train was driven across it. The length of the bridge 
was 10,350 feet, and it included in all 85 spans, supported 
by the same number of piers, some of which were of brick, 
but the bulk of cast-iron cyhnders with wrought-iron struts 
and cross bracing between. 

It was on the night of the 28th of December, 1879, 
about eighteen months after the public opening, that a 
terrible storm raged over the north of Scotland. The 
northern express had been duly signalled into Dundee 
Station, but did not make its appearance. No one thought 
much of that, but a journalist, who happened to be passing 
in the streets, was accosted by a drunken roysterer, who 
was talking incoherently about having seen a blaze of 
fireworks on the bridge, and who thought the bridge had 
broken down. It did not strike him as anything very 
pecuUar, though it seems that he was the only human 
being who witnessed the catastrophe, but the journalist, 
horrorstruck, went to the station to make inquiries. At the 
station there was no anxiety, but to re-assure him, the 
authorities telegraphed to the signal-box across the bridge. 
To the signals they sent out there was no reply, and it 



226 All About Engineering 

was not long before the awful truth was known that the 
train with its load of ninety passengers had plunged into 
the gap of the bridge to its doom. It was through that one 
journalist that the news of the catastrophe was made 
known to the world. There was a solitary survivor, a small 
dog that floated ashore from the wreckage, and a friend 
has told me that he remembers reading a paragraph in the 
papers years later when the dog died, recalling that it 
was the only living creature that was saved from the 
wreck. 

An investigation was made by the Board of Trade 
into the cause of the disaster, and the opinion given was 
that the vertical columns of the bridge had not been suffi- 
ciently braced to withstand the lateral wind pressure. By 
the side of the old bridge, a new one was eventually con- 
structed — the bridge that is in use at the present day. In 
the new bridge, advantage was taken in an ingenious way 
of the lifting power of the tides. When the piers had been 
completed, and it became necessary to bring out to them 
the girders that had been built on shore, two monster 
pontoons were floated at low water under the ends of the 
girder in question. As the tide rose, the pontoons took 
the weight of the girder, and were towed out to the pier. 
The pontoons were then moored so as to be directly under 
the position that the girders were to occupy, and when 
high water had been reached, packing was put under the 
girder to keep it in place, and the pontoons dropped away 
with the tide. At low water, again, the girder was packed 
securely on to the pontoons, and the tide again lifted it 
by the whole of its rise, and so the process went on until 
the girder had eventually been raised to the necessary height. 




Fhoto : U7ide>"wood & Uiiderivood^ New York 

BRIDGE BUILDING 

Workmen placing into position one of the immense uprights 200 feet 
above the river 



Bridge Building 227 

I have beside me, as I am writing, the original account 
of the Menai Bridge, that was prepared by Wilham Provis, 
who was acting engineer for Thomas Telford, the engineer 
responsible for the work. It is a curious unwieldy volume 
published in 1828, and is 2 feet 3 inches taU and over 
1 1 feet across. In his preface, Provis writes with 
reason : 

" Few works connected with the profession of a civil 
engineer have excited so strong and general an interest 
as the Suspension Bridge over the Menai Strait, between 
Anglesea and Carnarvon ; for though the principle of its 
construction is as old as the spider's web, the apphcation 
on a scale of such magnitude, the durability of the materials 
of which the bridge is composed, and the scientific com- 
bination of its various parts, render it one of the noblest 
examples of British skill. As a public convenience, too, 
it is of the highest importance ; for instead of an uncertain 
ferry over an often tempestuous Strait, at aU times crossed 
with trouble and delay, and frequently at the risk of life, 
a commodious roadway has now been established between 
its shores, that can be passed at all times with safety and 
comfort," 

As you probably know, the essential feature of a sus- 
pension bridge is that the roadway is slung on wires that 
pass from lofty towers that are built on the shore ends, 
the chief advantages being that in this way navigation is 
not impeded by piers being sunk throughout the fairway, 
and that the bridge itself can easily be slung high above 
the stream without there being any danger of interfering 
with shipping. Provis gives a very full account of the way 
in which many of the local pilots hotly argued that the 



228 All About Engineering 

bridge would make the navigation of vessels under it a 
proceeding of great danger, and it is curious to find from 
time to time a reflection in his account of this engineering 
work of the vanity of man. Thus he writes : 

" Accordingly, on the loth of August, 1818, the first 
stone was laid. Two of the Commissioners, viz. Sir Thomas 
Mostyn and Sir Henry Parnell, were in the neighbourhood, 
but as it had been previously determined that it should be 
attended with no public ceremony, the worthy baronets 
declined giving their attendance. It was, accordingly, 
lowered to its place and set, by myself and the masonry 
contractors, whilst three cheers from the surrounding 
workmen closed the ceremonial." 

Many difficulties were encountered during the work of 
building. On more than one occasion, the vessels used in 
connection with the work were shipwrecked, so much so 
that the masons were frequently held up for want of stone. 
A special machine had to be constructed to test the iron- 
work used, as Telford insisted that each bar should pass 
a test twice as severe as that to which it would be sub- 
jected in the bridge. To facilitate the work of repair the 
method of building was such that any portion could be 
taken out and replaced independently. So important was 
it that the iron of the bridge should fit perfectly on to 
the stone that, though the masonry had been dressed as 
smooth as masons' tools could make it, yet as neither its 
surface nor those of the iron castings were so smooth as 
to produce a perfect contact, they had recourse to the 
curious expedient of saturating two or three thicknesses of 
coarse flannel with white lead and oil, whereby a perfect 
fit was secured. Again, when the second set of the giant 



Bridge Building 229 

chains that were to carry the bridge had been put up, it 
was found that some of the hnks had been damaged, and 
the ingenious method was adopted of taking the strain off 
one of the damaged links after another, and replacing 
them \\dthout having in any way to disturb the position 
of the chain. The total weight of the bridge suspended 
was, according to Provis's calculations, 643 tons 15 cwts. 
2 qrs. 7 lbs. The distance between the supporting pyramids 
of the bridge was 560 feet. The pyramids themselves were 
50 feet above the roadway, and the sixteen chains which 
passed over the pyramids were securely anchored in masses 
of masonry. As you \\ill see, there are in the Suspension 
bridge four essential factors : the piers that carry the 
downward pressure, the p5n:amids on top of which the 
chains ride, the chains themselves on which the bridge is 
slimg, and the heavy masonry by which the chains are 
firmly anchored to earth. 

Since the great bridge across the Menai Strait was 
built, there have been huge suspension bridges erected all 
over the world. There is the Conway Suspension Bridge, 
for instance, constructed by Telford, the Clifton Suspen- 
sion Bridge thro^vn across the Avon in the midst of wild 
picturesque scenery, and that made use of the massive 
chains that had been a part of the Hungerford Bridge at 
Charing Cross, but the most noted example of this type of 
construction is the bridge known as the Brooklyn Bridge, 
that connects Brooklyn and New York. 

The bridge spans the river that separates these two 
centres, and as this is crowded \vith shipping, it was obvious 
from the outset that a lofty structure was essential, so 
that the vessels should not be interfered with. Figures will 



230 All About Engineering 

demonstrate that it was no light task that had to be 
achieved. The distance was 5,88g feet, or- considerably 
over a mile. The towers were 276 feet high, and placed 
1,600 feet apart, and the original estimate of £2,160,000 
for the cost grew to £3,100,000, because the Government 
insisted that the bridge should be 5 feet higher and 5 feet 
broader than was originally intended. The weight of 
masonry to which the four cables supporting the bridge 
are anchored weigh 60,000 tons apiece. 

The engineers began by building the towers in 1870. 
On the Brooklyn side, the work took five years, and on 
the New York side, six, for the foundations had to be 
carried 79 feet down below the high tide level deep into 
solid rock. 

The most dramatic feature of the work was the first 
spanning of the gap between the towers. A huge steel 
rope was coiled up on the Brooklyn side of the river, and 
the end dragged up to the top of the Brooklyn tower, and 
let down from this into the river below. Then a tug took 
charge, and dragged it across to the New York side, where 
it was drawn round a drum at the top of the New York 
tower, and sent back to Brooklyn. In this way, the 
engineers had an endless rope along which men and 
material could be drawn from end to end. The first man 
to cross from side to side by the bridge was Farrington, 
one of the engineers. The journey took 20 minutes to 
make, and all that those below could see was the man 
swaying in the wind as the wires bent beneath his weight. 
With the towers completed, and union between them 
effected, the work went rapidly. It was decided that the 
bridge should be slung on iron skeins. The threads form- 




Photo : UftdeJiuood .& Undeiivood , i\ew York 

BRIDGE BUILDING 

Putting a cross beam into place 



Bridge Building 231 

ing the skein were only I inch in diameter, and each skein 
consisted of some 300 separate threads, and to make the 
skein, the wire had to be carried backwards and forwards 
with the traveller that had been set up. Nineteen skeins 
went to a cable, and elaborate precautions had to be 
adopted when the time came for them to be tied together 
to form the united whole. It was the essence of the work 
that each wire should bear its fair share of the weight, 
but when the sun shone on the bridge, the wires expanded 
and contracted unequally ; when the wind blew, there 
W9s a similar result, and it was, therefore, only on 
calm, sunless days that the tying of the wires could 
be effected. 

In the course of the work, there was one occasion 
when a disaster was only narrowly averted, and that by pure 
good luck. The skeins of wire were, of course, subjected 
to an intense strain, and once one of these became un- 
moored from the New York side. The effect was as if the 
god Vulcan had suddenly turned Cossack, and was crack- 
ing a whip of steel over the waterways of the city. The 
released skein tore to the top of the tower, and hurtled 
all amongst the shipping below, by a miracle of good 
fortune avoiding all the craft. 

In the completed bridge, elaborate means have been 
adopted to allow for expansion and contraction. The 
cast-iron saddles on which the cables rest move over forty 
iron rollers, and the bridge itself is in two sections, joined 
in the middle by a sliding joint ; the effect of contraction 
and expansion is seen by the fact that the bridge rises 
above its normal height , in the winter months, while in 
the hot days of the New York summer it sags below it. 



232 All About Engineering 

Here are a few of the dimensions of this remarkable 
bridge : 

Headway . . . . . . . . 135 feet 

Size of New York caisson , . 172 feet by 102 feet 
Greatest width of bridge . . 85 feet 

Cubic contents of New York tower 47,000 cubic yards 
Diameter of cables . . . . i5f inches ^ 

Total length of single cable . . 3,600 feet '^^ 

Length of wrapping wire in each cable over 243 miles ,^ 

Sustaining power of each cable 12,000 tons ^ 

Weight of each cable . . , . 3,000 „ 
Length of wire in each cable . . 3,500 miles 

At Niagara, it may be of interest to note there are 
both suspension and cantilever bridges. 

The bridge that the engineers have thrown across the 
Zambesi River, just below the Victoria Falls, has attracted 
world-wide attention. The Falls themselves are one of 
the marvels of Nature, for in the distant recesses of time 
an earthquake shattered the river bed, opening a crack 
100 yards wide, and making the ;river fling itself down into a 
gulf 400 feet deep. The noise of the Falls is like that Of 
incessant thunder, and the natives of Africa speak of thei!i 
with bated breath as the "Place of the Sounding Smoke." 

The principle on which the bridge has been constructed 
is that of the simple arch that we have had handed down 
from a time that outstrips the memory of man, but the 
material used was of iron girders, and you can imagine 
that it was no easy task for the engineers to arrange for 
all their material to be built in this country, and to have 
it shipped across, carried to the Falls by the Rhodesian 
Railway Company, and then set up by native labour. 



Bridge Building 233 

In the Brooklyn Bridge, you will remember one of the 
first things was to span the gap between the towers. At 
the Falls, the engineers had the same problem, and they 
solved it ingeniously. A powerful sky-rocket threw a 
light line from the one bank to the other. To the line a 
stout cord was attached, and then a rope, the rope being 
followed by a wire cable 2 inches thick. On this wire a cage 
-was suspended driven by electricity, and from this cage, 
suspended at the dizzy height above the river beneath, 
the men did the bulk of their work. 

It is, as you know, the essence of the arch that the 
keystone enables the structure to hold firmly together, 
and it is easy to realise, therefore, that as the bridge was 
being built out from side to side, it was necessary to provide 
strong supports to carry the overhanging weight of the 
girders. An ingenious method was adopted for carrying 
this weight. On each bank a couple of holes were drilled 
into the rock, 30 feet apart and 30 feet up, their bases 
being connected with a small tunnel that ran under the 
living rock. Through this a stout wire rope was passed, 
and the ends of it were carried out to the overhanging 
girders of the bridge. So great was the strain placed on the 
wire and the solid anchorage of rock, that, to prevent all 
chance of the wire tearing out of the anchorage, the ground 
between the holes was weighted with 5,000 tons of rail- 
way rails. 

And now we come to what is, I think, the most dramatic 
instance I know of the part that expansion and contrac- 
tion through changes of temperature plays in engineering 
work. The bridge was finished all but the central girder, 
the keystone of the arch. The girder was slung into place, 



234 All About Engineering 

and it was found to be i J inches too long. Meanwhile, the 
sun was blazing down on the engineers, and with the girder 
ready to slip into position they waited for the cool of the 
night. As the sun dropped to the horizon, the great girder 
began to contract, and by the time that it had cooled through 
the night, it, and the bridge with it, had contracted so that 
it fitted perfectly, and was securely bolted home. 

For all that we regard the Tower Bridge as something 
entirely novel in design, it is, as a matter of fact one of 
the oldest types of bridge construction in the world. The 
engineers then were faced with the same problem they 
had had to deal with in the Forth and Tay Bridges, in the 
Brooklyn Bridge and in the bridge across the Menai Straits : 
to bridge over an expanse of water without interfering 
with the passage of shipping beneath it. The solution 
found in the Tower Bridge was, in essence, the same that 
was found by the knights of the Middle Ages with the 
swing bridges that gave admission to their castles. 

Technically, the bridge is said to have been constructed 
on the " Bascule " principle ; it consists essentially of two 
large piers, 200 feet apart, which carry between them two 
separate roadways. The one is a permanent structure for 
the use of pedestrians, and is 135 feet or more above the 
level of the water. The lower bridge consists of two leaves 
that are counterbalanced with extraordinary accuracy by 
heavy weights, so that the chief work that has to be done 
when a high-masted vessel wishes to pass below the bridge 
is to overcome any force that wind pressure may exert to 
prevent opening, and the relatively small amount of resist- 
ance offered by friction. The foundations of each pier 
were laid on twelve caissons, which were so formed as to 



Bridge Building 235 

make a coffer-dam. Inside this a solid bedding of concrete 
was put down, and this was carried almost to the surface 
of the river-bed, above which granite was used. In these 
piers, as in the towers that are carried on them, the lifts 
and the hydraulic machinery necessary to operate the 
leaves of the bridge is contained. The size of each movable 
leaf is 100 feet long by 50 feet wide, and the weight 700 
tons. Enormous masses of material were required for the 
work. There are 31,000,000 bricks, 70,500 cubic yards of 
concrete, 19,500 tons of cement, 235,000 cubic feet of 
granite and other stone, and 10,500 tons of iron and steel 
incorporated in the structure. 

Another ingenious method by which the same problem 
of keeping open a waterway is solved is by a swing bridge, 
supported in the centre on a strong pier. You can see 
examples of the bridge in all sizes on the Norfolk Broads. 
There is a large one, for instance, near Yarmouth, that 
1 have several times passed through, and very annoying 
it is, when you are sailing, to have to wait until the bridge 
is opened for you, and perhaps even more than with most 
bridges you almost invariably get a false wind as you are 
on the way through, so that you have to be specially care- 
ful that your boat does not come violently into collision 
with the sides of the bridge. There is one of these bridges 
on the Hull and Doncaster Railway, that is 250 feet long, 
and carries two lines of permanent track. 

One of the prettiest and most modern ways — also 
curiously enough one of the oldest on a smaU scale — by 
which this same difficulty is met, is by what is known as 
the transporter bridge.. In this there are, as usual, two 
lofty towers with a bridge running between them at a 



236 All About Engineering 

big height above the river, the problem being by means 
of this high structure to give a passage to man, animals 
and carriages from one low-l5dng bank to another. It may 
be of interest to compare the problem with that facing 
the engineers at Clifton. There the river runs in a deep 
chasm, and the traffic already is far above the water-level, 
but the river bank is, in most cases, only a little above 
water level, and the cost of constructing a vast embank- 
ment up which loads could be drawn to the high levels of 
the towers would be prohibitive. 

We will take the Runcorn Transporter Bridge as a type. 
It crosses the River Mersey and the Manchester Ship Canal 
between Widnes and Runcorn, and stands on four great 
iron towers, which on the Widnes side spring straight out 
of the solid rock, but on the Runcorn side are built on 
cylinders that had to be sunk 35 feet to get down to rock 
foundations. The bridge span, as you will see from the 
illustration, is supported by two great cables that ride 
over the summit of the towers, and the lowest girder of 
the 1,000 feet span is 82 feet above the level of the water. 
Rails are carried on this span and a trolley, electrically 
driven, runs from end to end, while slung beneath it is the 
transporter car, a stoutly-built structure, 55 feet long and 
24 feet wide, that is capable of dealing with the heaviest 
loads of machinery that are brought across on it. It will 
give you some idea of the size of the transporter car when 
you know that 500 or 600 people are often carried across 
at a single journey. 

Another instance of the ingenuity of the engineer in 
meeting the difficulty of navigation is what is known as 
the lift-bridge. The central span of these bridges is so 



Bridge Building 237 

arranged that machinery Hfts it bodily from the low level 
at which traffic crosses it to a high level sufficient to enable 
big ships to pass beneath it. This type of bridge was set 
up at Halsted Street, in Chicago, and, owing to bad design 
of the machinery, was the standing joke of the town, 
because it almost invariably stuck at the critical moment. 
When a better type of machinery was installed, however, 
it worked perfectly, and the success of it, in Chicago, caused 
the adoption of the principle for the Kansas City Bridge 
over the Mississippi River. The bridge, when completed, 
was 4,150 feet long, and the central lifting span 425 1 feet 
across. It carries a lower deck for railroad traffic and an 
upper deck 72 feet for cars and road traffic. When the 
span is raised to its maximum height above low water, 
there is a sheer drop of 100 feet. 

Bridge-building is full of sensational feats, but the 
construction of a special railway across the sea so as to 
connect New York by railway carriage with Havana is, I 
think, quite without parallel. The railway line runs a 
distance of 156 miles from Miami on the mainland to Key 
West, 100 miles of which is over water, and the train 
then goes direct by train ferry the 90 miles to Havana. 
In its passage from Miami to Key West, the railway uses 
no fewer than forty-eight coral islands, called keys, as 
stepping-stones, and the water channels it crosses in between 
these islands are often several miles across with depths 
varying between a few feet to over 80 feet. The prospect- 
ing of this great bridge involved terrible hardships. The 
engineering parties often got lost, and they had to struggle 
in dense, alligator-haunted jungle. One episode in the 
work was when the contractors came across an island 



238 All About Engineering 

lake with a bottom of soft peat. They tried to bridge it 
and failed, and they found it necessary to drain and fill 
it in, a work that cost them fifteen months. When the 
actual work of building the line across the ocean started, 
they found it necessary to use a most extraordinary fleet 
of boats — floating machine shops, barges, work boats fitted 
with concrete mixers and derricks, floating pile drivers, tugs, 
paddleboats, petrol launches and house-boats. When the 
islands were close together, embankments were built, and 
the line run along them. Larger openings were bridged with 
viaducts, one of which, 10,500 feet long, has 186 arches. 
Sometimes the engineers built their bridges of reinforced 
concrete, and at other times they used steel, but even then 
the foundations for the bridge had to be built on concrete 
piers. An extraordinary fact brought to light by the build- 
ing of this railway was that on some of these islands there 
were men living solitary desolate lives, an individual 
Spaniard being found who said that he had Uved on one 
of the islands for thirty years, making his livelihood from 
the natural resources of the island. The expense of con- 
struction was naturally enormous, working out to over 
£3,000,000, or at an average of £20,000 a mile. Its effect 
has been to bring New York into close touch with Cuba, and 
also nearer to Panama and the States of Southern America. 
The subject of bridge building is almost interminable, 
and I will do no more than mention an amazingly bold 
scheme that they are thinking of adopting at San Francisco 
to cross the bay. The idea is to build a nine-mile bridge 
right across the harbour to deal with the heavy flow of 
traffic — passenger and goods — that at present has to cross 
day by day in ferry boats. 



Bridge Building 239 

For the conclusion of my chapter I am indebted to the 
Editor of Technical World Magazine for leave to include 
an account of one of the most marvellous engineering 
feats in bridge building that it has ever been my lot to 
read about. As the author, Mr. Carlyle Ellis, puts it, 
there is an entry in the pocket-book of Mr. C. E. 
Hawkins, the engineer who built the Copper River and 
North-Western Railway in Alaska, under the date of 
May 14, 1 910, which reads : " The false work under the 
third span of the bridge was moved out 15 inches by 
the ice, and had to be put back." 

The bridge in question was the Miles Glacier Bridge 
across the Copper River and the third span was 450 feet 
long. The false work referred to was the mass of wood 
staging on which the third span rested before it had been 
made fast, and consisted of a thousand or two piles driven 
deep into the bottom of the Copper River, 40 feet below 
the surface. It was frozen solid with 7 feet of ice, and a 
i2-knot current raced underneath. The spring break-up 
had begun, and the ice-cap, Ufted 20 feet above its winter 
level, was moving. The safety of the third span of the 
bridge was threatened with immediate disaster, for nothing 
could withstand the 7 feet of ice, if, gripping the piles, it 
started to try and lift them. Every available engine was 
put to furnishing steam to small feed-pipes, and every 
man in camp was set to work to chop or to melt the 7 feet 
of ice clear of the piles. And the work was done. The holes 
were kept open through days and nights of bitter cold, 
and hundreds of cross-pieces that kept the piles together 
had to be unbolted and shifted while the river rose 21 feet. 
It was noticed, however, that the false work was moving 



240 All About Engineering 

down stream. It started by about an inch a day, then 
3 or 4 inches, and at last the ice made its heaviest charge ; 
a Hne was taken ; the false work was 15 inches out, and 
it had to be put back. This meant fresh work for the men, 
who were already broken with cold and overwork, and 
a fresh load of anxiety for the over-burdened engineer. 
The ice-chopping and ice-melting had still to be done, but 
with diminished forces, and a gang of men was drafted off 
to build heavy anchorages into the ice up stream, to rig 
up blocks and tackles, and start dragging the massive false 
work back into place. Every day the ice was moving more 
freely, and there was less and less respite in the furious 
race the engineers were running with the river and moving 
ice. The last bolt of the span was sent home one mid- 
night after an eighteen-hour day of one shift. The great 
steam traveller was slid to a temporary resting-place on 
the third pier, the blocks were knocked away, and the 
third span settled safe on its concrete bed. At one o'clock 
the whole 450 feet of false work was a tangled wreck, the 
piles twisted and torn and shattered. The river had won 
its fight, but an hour too late. The engineers had saved a 
year's work, and in that year a fortune. 

The bridge that was saved in this dramatic way was 
the point on which the failure or success of the whole line 
turned, and the difficulties presented in its construction 
were unprecedented. Where the bridge crosses the river, 
it has to withstand the bombardment of giant bergs, hurled 
hour after hour against it at 12 miles an hour, and the 
piers have to be strong enough to stand the enormous 
pressure exerted by the break-up of the 7-foot ice-sheet 
spring after spring. The building of the bridge was a 



Bridge Building 241 

$1,000,000 gamble, and if the engineers lost their stake, 
the loss carried with it disaster to the whole $15,000,000 
project of the railway. 

They started by driving great concrete piers heavily 
reinforced with steel through the winter ice, then 40 or 50 
feet through the river bottom, till they came to bedrock, 
and they supported their piers by having a row of eighty- 
pound rails round them, all the piers being protected 
with ice breakers. This was not too easy a job, because 
before the work was over a lake burst out from the Upper 
Glacier, and raised the height of the river by 20 feet in 
an hour. But the unfinished bridge stood this test 
that was sprung upon the engineer without his having 
any warning. 

At last the piers were finished by autumn, 1909, and 
the steelwork began to arrive. It was not until late in the 
spring of 1910 that the last numbered piece was on the 
ground, the whole checked and re-checked to ensure that 
there was not a single omission, which might delay the whole 
work a twelvemonth. Here is how Mr. Carlyle Ellis sum- 
marises the achievement : 

" The checking of the steel was completed on April 5, 
which left less than six weeks to put together more than 
1,100 feet of extra heavy bridge with a single crew of steel 
workers. Facing such a task, and with the prospect of 
raging storms of rain, sleet and snow about half the time, 
ahnost anyone but Hawkins, and his bridge engineer, 
A. C. O'Neil, would have thrown up his hands in hopeless 
despair. Within an hour of the time the last piece was 
checked the first big girder was in place. Ten and a half 
days later, the first span, 400 feet long, was completed. 



Q 



242 All About Engineering 

Nearly 40 feet of towering steel structures a day with a 
single shift of men, day after day, through the storms and 
the darkness ! But the second and third spans were faster 
still. The second, of 300 feet, was built in six days, and 
the giant third, of 450 feet, in spite of extraordinary diffi- 
culties, in an even ten days. The bridge was completed on 
May 16, except a fourth span, which was over shallow water 
above the danger of ice. The 1,150 feet of bridge was thus 
built in an elapsed time of just under six weeks, and an 
actual working time on the steel of twenty-seven days." 

The feat, I think you will agree, amply justifies the 
statement that the exploit was unexampled in bridge 
building, and I will bring this chapter to a close by quoting 
to you from the account Mr. Hawkins himself gave of it. 
" The men," he said, " were on the [job at seven in the 
morning, no matter what the weather. They worked without 
ceasing till the noon whistle blew, then raced each other 
to the mess tent. A few minutes later they were flying 
back like an army of squirrels, and there they stayed until 
eleven or twelve at night, or until flesh and blood could 
stand no more. It was the most amazing exhibition of 
loyalty, efficiency and endurance I have ever known." 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE GYROSTAT — ITS THEORY AND ITS APPLICATION TO 
VARIOUS INVENTIONS 

Progress throughout the world is in most instances con- 
ditioned by the discovery of a new instrument. Imagine, 
if you can, the stupendous effect on the world's advance of 
the invention of the wheel, the wedge and the screw. Let 
your mind now wander through historical time and notice 
how our control over Nature has been dominated by the 
discovery of the rail, the steam engine, the electric motor, 
the telegraph instrument, the telescope, the microscope, 
the turbine, and the other epoch-making inventions. In 
science each new instrument has usually, if not invariably, 
meant a fresh method of attack against the dark clouds 
of ignorance and stupidity ; and as with science, so it is 
with engineering. The engineer is quick to seize on a new 
idea, and to find that by its help it is possible for him to 
perform operations that were previously beyond his scope. 
I do not wish to labour this point, which, after all, is clear 
enough in itself after a moment's reflection, but I propose 
to devote this chapter to a short consideration of the latest 
new principle that has been brought under contribution — 
the gyrostat. 

What a curious irony it is, when you come to think 
of it, that the children of untold generations have been 
using in their play with pegtops just the same principles 

243 



244 All About Engineering 

as those on which the gyrostat depends, and that it has 
needed all these centuries before the right man came along 
to ask himself the question why the spinning-top behaved 
in its own peculiar manner. When you come to think 
of it, it requires explanation that the hoop will keep up- 
right while it is being trundled along, and that the pegtop 
will " sleep " when properly spun — ^nay, it will do more, 
and resist any attempt to push it on one side from its up- 
right posture — and that the bicyclist finds it difficult to 
balance himself unless he keeps moving at a certain speed. 
And yet most of us have handled these things, and not 
given a thought to the principles that underlay their 
action. 

It is many years now since Professor John Perry, who 
is at present the Treasurer of the British Association, in 
delivering a special popular lecture, took the spinning- 
top for his subject. Before describing a few of the applica- 
tions of the instrument I propose to attempt to give you 
some account of the principles of the instrument itself, 
as they were laid down by the late Lord Kelvin. 

The gyrostat in essence is nothing more nor less than 
a flywheel spinning rapidly about its axis. Let me take 
an example of gyrostatic action that must be familiar to 
everybody. When you have taken down a bicycle and are 
thinking of putting the front wheel back into place, you 
have probably held it by its axle, and allowed the wheel 
to spin to see that you have not screwed the cones too 
tightly into the ball-race. In holding the wheel, you must 
accidentally, at any rate, have moved the axis with the 
wheel still spinning, so that you were attempting to turn 
it in a direction different from that of its former axis, and 



The Gyrostat 245 

you must have felt that the wheel resisted your efforts, 
acting as if it were a body endowed with life. Now that 
is a good instance of gyrostatic action, and tells us an 
essential of the spinning gyrostat, that it resists strongly 
any attempt to change its axis of rotation, or, put more 
technically, that the effect of attempting to rotate the 
wheel about a new axis is to send its spinning axis towards 
the direction of the new axis. 

If we were to try to go farther than this into the laws 
governing the behaviour of a gyrostat, we should soon 
find ourselves landed in what most of you would regard 
as a mathematical treatise ; so, instead, I will simply refer 
those of you who wish to go more deeply into the theory 
to Professor Perry's book on " Spinning Tops," and at 
the same time draw your attention to the rigidity that 
can be assumed by rapidly rotating bodies. Most of you 
will have heard that it is possible to cut through iron by 
means of a spinning disc of paper ; if a jet of water is being 
squirted out with sufficient force, it is impossible even for 
a strong man to drive a sledge-hammer through it ; a 
chain wheel spun on a mandrel, and slipped off it while 
it is whirling, will bounce from a table on to which it falls 
like a boy's hoop ; and, to quote Professor Perry's own 
words for one of his illustrations, " Here is a very soft 
hat, specially made for this sort of experiment. You will 
note that it collapses to the table in a shapeless mass when 
I lay it down, and seems quite impossible of resisting forces 
which tend to alter its shape. In fact, there is almost a 
complete absence of rigidity ; but when this is spun on 
the end of a stick, first note how it has taken a very easily 
defined shape ; secondly, note how it runs along the table 



246 All About Engineering 

as if it were made of steel ; thirdly, note how all at once 
it collapses again into a shapeless mass of soft material 
when its rapid motion has ceased. Even so you will see 
that when a drunken man is not leaning against a wall or 
lamp-post, he feels that his only chance of escape from 
ignominious collapse is to get up a decent rate of speed, to 
obtain a quasi-sobriety of demeanour by rapidity of motion." 

Now that we have some sort of idea of what a gyrostat 
is, we must realise that electricity is harnessed to it to 
give it an enormous speed of rotation, that the wheel will 
be enclosed in a vacuum to prevent the retardation due 
to the friction of the air, and that its weight will reach 
such dimensions as to be measured in tons. 

At the Royal Institution recently, Dr. James G. Gray 
gave a beautiful demonstration of several of the curious 
ways in which a gyrostat will behave. For instance, if you 
have your top spinning on a horizontal axis and press down 
on one end of the axes, the axis does not tend to go off the 
level, but it starts to turn so that the part you are touching 
moves away crabwise. If the gyrostat is hung on gimbals 
so that it can swing like a ship's compass in any direction, 
you can turn the pedestal on which it stands just as you 
please, and its axis will remain always pointing like a 
compass in the one direction. This amazing instrument 
can be made to support itself on a skate edge, to ride a 
bicycle, correcting the balance automatically in the same 
way that a bicycle rider corrects balance, to keep itself 
upright when resting on gimbals, and to trace curious 
figures when fitted as the bob of a pendulum. 

What, you may fairly ask me, has all this to do with 
engineering ? I should be justified in including the gyrostat 



The Gyrostat 247 

in this book even if I had no better answer than to point 
to the fact that nearly every machine has some heavy 
wheel or other in a state of rapid rotation, and that in 
many of these, as on board ship, on motor-cars, trains and 
elsewhere, the axis of rotation is continually liable to 
change. Here is a force, therefore, that the engineer has 
to take very seriously into account, for the gyrostatic action 
of such parts will put a very serious strain on the machinery 
he has installed. But the gyrostat has entered still more 
directly into the work of the engineer. It is through it that 
Mr. Brennan has been able to construct his mono-rail 
railway, for he arranged his rapidly-whirling heavy turbines 
in such a way that they resist any attempt made to shift 
their axes out of the vertical, and force the train to keep a 
level position on the single line of railway on which they 
run.* Take again the application of the gyrostat to the 
torpedo. The working out of the way in which the torpedo 
could be guided by means of gjn-ostats so impressed the 
British Government, that they willingly gave Mr. Brennan 
£110,000 for the patent rights. 

War is a great quickener of man's inventive powers, 
and the next most important application of the gyrostat 
is to provide men-of-war with non-magnetic compasses — 
with compasses, that is, that will not be affected by the 
firing of heavy guns, or by the massive steel with which 
they are surrounded. In this the gyrostat is mounted 
with its axis horizontal. In these circumstances the axis 
of the gyrostat lies in the plane containing the axis of the 
earth and the position occupied by the gyrostat ; thus the 
equilibrium position of the flywheel is that in which its 

* For an accovmt of the mono-rail and the principle on which it works, 
see Mr. P. S. Hartnell's " All About Railways." (Cassell & Co.) 



248 All About Engineering 

axis points to north or south. Another instance of the 
uses for which the gyrostat has been employed is to give 
additional stability to ships at sea. It is a matter of common 
knowledge that the cause of a ship's excessive rolling is the 
cumulative action of the waves, and that this is only 
possible when the period of a ship's roll and that of the 
waves are nearly the same. The effect of adding the gyrostat 
is to lengthen the period of roll, and thereby to put a 
small ship in the same advantageous position in this respect 
as that enjoyed by a large vessel. Also a method of using 
the gyrostat has been designed so that the energy of a 
ship's oscillations can be damped and converted into heat 
and dissipated at the bearings of the gyrostat. 

You will remember that I have spoken of the gyrostatic 
action of the rotating parts of a ship and of a motor-car. 
Now a study of gyrostatic action teaches us that the action 
of the paddle-wheels results to a certain extent in changes 
in the direction of the ship's head taking the place of roll- 
ing, in such a way that if the steamer tends to tilt to star- 
board, her bow turns to starboard, whereas if she tilts to 
port, she turns to port. But it so happens that this tendency 
is corrected, for in tilting to starboard, for instance, her 
starboard paddles are more deeply immersed, and thus 
direct her head to port. Otherwise it would be a most 
difficult matter to steer a vessel straight in a heavy sea. 

I cannot pretend that this chapter makes easy reading, 
but it is, I am afraid, an impossible task to treat of the 
gyrostat shortly and non-technically. There are so many 
ideas connected with it that require a more or less technical 
study of mechanics, that if I had aimed at giving anything 
approaching to a full description, I should have had to 



The Gyrostat 249 

deal in some detail with the elements of mechanics. These, 
if you are interested in engineering, you will before long 
have picked up for yourselves, and be able, by reference 
to the original authorities, to get a clear understanding 
of all the not very complex principles that account for the 
behaviour of the gyrostat. I shall have done sufficient here 
in drawing your attention to a few of the effects of gyro- 
static action, and, I hope, in inspiring you to take a greater 
interest than you have done before in the toy that you 
have probably often seen sold under the title of the gyro- 
scope top. 



CHAPTER XVII 

CABLE LAYING — ^THE STORY OF THE FIRST ATLANTIC CABLE 
— STRANGE EVENTS CONNECTED WITH THE DISCOVERY 
OF PALMYRA 

No branch of engineering has done more to promote peace 
between the different nations of the world than the romantic 
one of cable laj^ng. When the only means of intercom- 
munication between the Old World and the New was by 
the sea, neither world knew much of the internal affairs 
of the other. In the imperfect state of knowledge there 
was abundant room for misunderstanding, and for the 
growth of bad feeling based on this ignorance. Commercial 
dealings, the strongest of all possible forces making for 
peace, were only possible in a broad way, and there was 
no sign of the close connection that now exists between 
the centres into which are focused the commercial life of 
Europe and the United States, the Stock Exchanges of 
London and New York. 

Wonderful as it must seem to us, however famihar we 
are with the fact, the change in the relations to one of 
international friendship and goodwill depends on the thin 
lines of cable that span the vast expanses of the dividing 
ocean, creeping to their appointed ends across the sand 
and the slime and the rocks that line the sea-fioor, down 
in the great depths tenanted by the sightless fish. 

Even now cable laying places a heavy tax on the 

250 



Cable Laying 251 

engineer entrusted with the work, but the methods employed 
and the difficulties conquered can be realised best by study- 
ing the history of the first Atlantic cable. The project was 
one of the boldest ever promoted. Lieutenant Maury, of 
the United States Navy, who took part in the original 
survey, reflected the scepticism against which the pro- 
jectors, Mr. (later Sir Charles) Bright, Mr. Cyrus Field 
and Mr. John Brett, had to contend when he wrote in his 
report, " I do not, however, pretend to consider the ques- 
tion as to the possibility of finding a time calm enough, the 
sea smooth enough, and wire long enough, or a ship big 
enough, to lay a coil of wire sixteen hundred miles in length." 
Professor Airy, the then Astronomer Royal, gave it as 
his opinion that " it was a mathematical impossibility to 
submerge a cable in safety at so great a depth," and that 
" if it were possible, no signals would be transmitted through 
so great a length." 

I owe the information to the well-known journalist, 
Mr. Moy Thomas, that the novelist Thackeray was another 
of the sceptics. " I have sunk a thousand pounds in the 
cable," he said one evening in private conversation to 
Mr. Moy Thomas's father, emphasising the double meaning 
of the word " sunk " with a wink, and adding that he never 
expected to see back a penny of his capital, but that he 
thought it right, on patriotic grounds, to support the 
scheme. 

Bright, at the time when he became engineer-in-chief, 
was a young man of twenty-four, but he had his splendid 
optimism, his earnestness, and his enthusiasm to pit 
against the gloomy prophecies that heralded the birth 
of the project. 



252 All About Engineering 

What were the problems the engineers had to face ? 
The distance, in the first place, from Valentia, on the west 
coast of Ireland, to Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, was no 
less than 1,640 nautical miles, and it was estimated that 
a length of cable of 2,500 miles would be required, 
the total weight of it being 2,500 tons. It consisted 
of seven insulated copper wires, surrounded by gutta-percha 
and then by hemp, the whole being armoured with eighteen 
iron strands, each containing seven iron wires. The length 
of copper and iron wire aU told was 340,500 miles, a length 
more than sufficient to stretch from the earth to the moon, 
and enough to engirdle the earth thirteen times. Little 
was known as to the conditions under which the work 
was to be attempted. It is true that cables had been laid 
uniting England and France, and between a few other 
places, but the depths and lengths encountered were 
trifling compared with the 2,000 fathoms that were to be 
met with in the Atlantic. There were all sorts of uneasy 
forebodings as to the difficulties that might arise. Some, 
by a curiously false reasoning, believed that with the great 
pressures existing at these vast depths the cable would 
never reach the bottom, others prophesied that the effect 
of the pressure would be to destroy the insulation, and 
there were many who held that bad weather would make 
the laying of the cable an impossible feat. 

There is something strangely stirring about the enter- 
prise and courage of the projectors of the Trans-Atlantic 
scheme. American investors provided them with little but 
sympathy, and the bulk of the capital was subscribed, as 
we can remember with pride, by British merchants, while 
both England and the United States lent the assistance 




Piioto Ue^S!s SuifitUi B) 



THE DECK OF A CABLE SHIP 
Note the cable being run out over the pulleys 




LAYING THE CABLE 
The workmen on the raft are attaching the shore end of the cable to buoys 



Cable Laying 253 

of ships of their Navy. The British Admiralty placed the 
Agamemnon at the disposal of the company, a coincidence 
that augured well for the success of the undertaking, for 
you wiU. remember that, as iEschylus has handed it down 
to us in his famous tragedy, it was Agamemnon, the King 
of the Greeks, who is recorded as having been the first 
in history to flash the news — in his case the news of the 
fall of Troy — by watch-fires across the hills to those who 
were waiting to know his fate in far-off Greece. 

The first year's attempt I will pass over in a few words. 
There was a great flourish of trumpets, a trifling mishap 
occurred at the outset, and when this had been repaired, 
380 miles of cable were paid out. Then a mechanic blun- 
dered, the cable jammed as it ran out over the unwinding 
apparatus, it parted, and the attempt that year had per- 
force to be abandoned. 

The event was an occasion of triumph for those who 
all along had been croaking of failure, but it served only 
to stiffen the backs of the projectors. They had learnt 
much from their trials. The cable as it sank to the depths 
of the ocean they now knew could be controlled, and 
Mr. Bright, profiting by the year's work, invented a new 
paying-out gear that should not suffer from the faults 
that had revccJed themselves in the old. Professor Thomson 
had invented his marvellous mirror galvanometer, and it 
had been proved that the subjection of the cable to great 
depths did not interfere with its power of conducting the 
electric current. Professor Thomson — later Sir William 
Thomson, and then the world-famed Lord Kelvin, whose 
remains now rest in Westminster Abbey close to those of 
Newton — was so greatly responsible for the success of the 



254 AH About Engineering 

cable, and his instrument is one of such extreme beauty, 
that, though it belongs to the realm of invention rather 
than to that of engineering, you may be interested to learn 
the principle on which it works. You know that if a magnet 
hangs suspended and is surrounded by a coil of wire through 
which an electric current is passing, it is turned away from 
pointing north and south. Professor Thomson arranged a 
tiny magnet and attached to it a minute mirror ; he magni- 
fied the effect of the electrical current by using very fine 
wire and winding many turns of it round his magnet, and 
then arranged that a beam of light should fall on his mirror. 
The reflection of this beam of light was caught on a screen, 
and however little the magnet and the mirror moved, there 
was a large movement of the spot of light across the screen. 
It sounds a simple enough apparatus, does it not ? Any boy 
with a taste for mechanics could put together a rough 
model in a couple of hours, and yet it was largely this instru- 
ment that was destined to make the working of the sub- 
marine cable a success. Here is an example of its amazing 
sensitiveness. Years later, when Mr. Latimer Clark, the 
electrician whose name still survives as the inventor of a 
special electric battery, was at Valentia, in Ireland, testing 
a new cable, he got the two Atlantic cables that met there 
joined together electrically at Newfoundland, so that he 
had a length of 3,700 miles of submarine cable to signal 
through. In his admirable book on " The Story of the 
Atlantic Cable," Mr. Charles Bright — he of the present 
generation — tells how Mr. Latimer Clark, who was testing 
the cable, " placed some pure sulphuric acid in a silver 
tumbler^ with a fragment of zinc weighing a grain or two. 
By this primitive agency he succeeded in conveying signals 



Gable Laying 255 

twice through the breadth of the Atlantic Ocean in httle 
more than a second of time after making the contact. 
The deflections were not of a dubious character, but full 
and strong, the spot of light traversing freely over a space 
of 12 inches or more." 

The Fury of the Ocean 

From this digression, we must return to the story of 
the second attempt. After a trial trip, during which several 
important tests were made, the fleet set out for the mid- 
Atlantic. It consisted of H.M.S. Agamemnon, the United 
States frigate Niagara, the Gorgon, the Valorous, and the 
Porcupine, but this time it started without any public 
encouragement. There was every prospect of fine weather, 
but the ships had scarcely been a week at sea when the 
ocean was swept by as fierce a storm as has ever been 
experienced in the Atlantic. It seemed as if the ocean 
were determined not to allow this infringement of its 
sovereign power. The Agamemnon was a good sea-boat, 
but with the dead weight of cable forward in the bows, 
her planks gapped an inch apart, and her beams threatened 
daily to give way. The Times correspondent, who was 
on board, sent to his paper an account of the terrible 
experience, an account which ranks as the most intensely 
reaUstic description of a storm ever written by an eye- 
witness. 

The storm lasted for a week, and during all this time 
it seemed impossible that the ship could survive. In the 
midst of the storm, when the heavy cable threatened to 
break loose and take charge, the Agamemnon fell into the 
trough of the gigantic seas which came on board ; the 



256 All About Engineering 

coal stored on the deck all broke loose, and the deck was 
a mass of confusion, men, coals, deck-buckets, ladders, and 
everything that could break loose being awash on the 
decks. The straining of the vessel was ghastly, as can be 
gathered from one of the accidents. A marine on the lower 
deck tried to save himself by catching hold of what seemed 
to be a ledge in the planks, but, unfortunately, the gap 
was only caused by the beams straining apart, and as the 
ship righted they closed again, crushing his fingers fiat. 
The lurch of the ship on this occasion was calculated 
to the amazing extent of 45 degrees each way for 
five times in succession. That the ship and her consorts 
ever survived the terrible buffeting is a striking tribute 
to the staunchness of her timbers and to the heroism 
of the officers in charge of her. The storm subsided, and 
the ships met at their rendezvous in calm water. There 
was no delay in starting operations ; the end of the Niagara's 
cable was passed aboard the Agamemnon, and spliced ; a 
bent sixpence was placed in the splice for luck, 150 fathoms 
of cable were paid out, and the two vessels steamed away 
on their course, respectively to Europe and America. 
After three miles had been paid out the cable, which was 
being allowed to run too slackly on the Niagara, overrode the 
unwinding gear, and broke. The vessels returned to the 
rendezvous, made a fresh splice and started again. This 
time everything worked well, but after about eight hours' 
running electric continuity was broken, and it was clear 
that the cable must have parted. 

You have probably been wondering how it is that 
with the ships many miles apart, out of sight, and the 
cable resting on the floor of the ocean, a break can be 



Gable Laying 257 

made known. The problem is not a difl&cult one. To the 
far end of each cable was fitted a transmitting and a 
receiving electrical instrument, and the electricians in 
charge agreed to send each other electric signals every 
ten minutes, so, naturally, as soon as the signals ceased 
to arrive, that is as soon as the electric continuity was 
broken, it was reahsed that a break in the cable must 
have occurred. 

The ships put back to their rendezvous, and, on speak- 
ing the Niagara the Agamemnon was amazed to see the 
flags run up to ask the question, " How did the cable 
break ? " Tests on board the two ships had shown that 
the break had occurred at a great distance from the ships, 
probably on the bed of the ocean, and there were naturally 
fears that the accident might have been due to some such 
insuperable obstacle as the presence of sharp-pointed rocks 
which had cut through the cable. There was no help for 
it but to begin all over again, and this time it was agreed 
that if another break occurred when more than loo miles 
had been steamed from the rendezvous, the ships should 
abandon the enterprise, and return to Queenstown. 

This time all went well for a while, and when the Aga- 
memnon had steamed 112 miles, the moment came to pay 
out the last flake of the first great coil of cable. The vessel 
was slowed down ; the instrument, fitted to show exactly 
the strain on the cable, was recording less than a ton of 
pressure when the cable parted. The storm that had 
nearly sunk the Agamemnon on her way out had shifted 
the flooring in the tank in which the cable was stored, 
had damaged it severely and made it unable to bear the 
strain. For the second time the attempt was abandoned. 

R 



258 All About Engineering 

The Last Attempt 

There is small mercy for the engineer who fails in his 
project. He is treated by the public as the Spaniards 
treat a toreador who misses his blow in a bull-fight, or 
as the Italians treat a singer who makes a false note, and 
when the year following the time came for a fresh start 
to be made, the squadron, as the Times account tells us, 
" seemed rather to have slunk away on some discreditable 
mission than to have sailed for the accomplishment of a 
great national scheme." Their mission was spoken of as 
a " mad freak and stubborn ignorance." It was " regarded 
with mixed feelings of derision and pity." The ships arrived 
without accident at their meeting-place in mid-ocean, and 
on Thursday, July 29, 1858, the splice was made, and 
the cable dropped overboard. Things went smoothly, and 
the first alarm was when a monster whale was seen approach- 
ing the cable at the rate of an express train. This leviathan 
of the deep appeared to be making straight for the cable, 
but at last, to the relief of all on board, it passed astern, 
just grazing the cable, where it entered the water. 

Within a few hours there was another dramatic inci- 
dent. An injured portion of the cable was discovered about 
a mile or two from the part that was being paid out. There 
were twenty minutes to spare, and the damaged part was 
being hastily cobbled up, when Professor Thomson reported 
that the electrical continuity of the line had ceased. 
Hurriedly the cable was cut above the damaged part, the 
ship was stopped, and the cable was let go as slowly as 
possible just to prevent its breaking from the strain. All 
eyes were fastened on the hold where the electricians were 



Gable Laying 259 

hurriedly making the necessary sphce. The time was in- 
sufficient, and the paying out of the cable had to be stopped. 
The dynamometer indicated a steadily increasing strain 
that rose to over two tons as the ship hung on to the end 
of the cable, but the splice was finished, the strain was 
released, and the spliced portion passed safely over the 
side. Within a few minutes, however. Professor Thomson 
reported a break. Anxiously, the ship watched, hoping 
against hope for a return of the signals, and in a few minutes 
the signals returned as well and strong as ever. The fault, 
it was found later, was in the recording instrument, not in 
the cable at all, but it gave to all on board an anxious time. 
Progress was now continuous, but when over 130 miles 
of distance had been made, it seemed that the ever-jealous 
sea, the sea of which Homer has said that no man may 
reap its harvest, was again to wreck the enterprise. The 
wind blew to a full gale, raising heavy waves and placing 
a terrible strain on the cable despite the zealous efforts of 
the engineers, to whom fell the lot of controlling the un- 
winding gear. Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning the 
gale lasted, and on Monday afternoon the stupidity of man 
was added to the risks of the undertaking. A three-masted 
schooner was seen bearing down upon the Agamemnon. 
When she was within half a mile, she altered to a course 
that was to bring her across the Agamemnon's bows, and 
a colhsion that might, and almost certainly would, have 
proved fatal to the enterprise seemed inevitable. The 
Valorous hurried along, and fired a gun to stop her ; the 
Agamemnon also fired to tell her to heave to, the Valorous 
fired a second and third time, but to no effect, and to avoid 
colhsion the Agamemnon had to resort to the desperate 



26o All About Engineering 

expedient of altering her course. The cable, however, bore 
the strain, but it was small consolation to the Agamemnon 
that the vessel saluted and cheered when she had discovered 
the work on which the Agamemnon was engaged. The 
danger from this source was not, however, even yet passed, 
for in the grey light of the following morning there was 
a large American barque seen standing right across the 
stern of the Agamemnon. It was no time for half -measures, 
or for nice courtesies. The Valorous rounded to in the 
most warlike attitude, and fired gun after gun until the 
vessel, in evident alarm, and no doubt in considerable 
indignation, hove to. At last shoal water was reached ; 
at midnight, on Wednesday, the 4th of August, the SkeUigs 
light was made in the distance ; ^ on Thursday the bold 
mountains of Valentia came into view, and the Agamemnon 
proudly anchored in Douglas Bay, conscious of the good 
work done, and overjoyed to hear from the Niagara far 
across the Atlantic that she, too, was preparing to land 
her end of the cable in safety. 

Of the congratulations lavished, and justly, on the 
engineers, of the messages sent between Queen Victoria 
and the President of the United States, I have no space to 
write, but the first message sent across the completed cable 
by the directors in Europe to the directors in America ran : 

" Europe and America are united by telegraphy. Glory to 
God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." 

You may be surprised at my giving so much room 
to the details of an achievement carried through fifty-five 
years ago. I have done it partly to pay a tribute to the 
memory of a gallant company who had trust in themselves 



Cable Laying 261 

and in their work when all around them doubted, partly 
because of the intense dramatic interest of the story, but 
principally because the work of cable laying to-day is 
essentially the same as it was in the days when the Aga- 
memnon and the Niagara made their pioneer attempt. 
Improvements have been made in the gear, but it remains 
broadly of the original type, though when the Great Eastern, 
the wonder-ship of Brunei, was pressed into the cable 
service, means were devised for picking up a broken cable 
no matter what the depth to which it was sunk. Except 
for the public scepticism, the difficulties and dangers are 
to-day much the same. There is the chance of tempestuous 
weather to be encountered, the danger of other vessels 
fouling the cable, the risk of the cable being sawn through 
by sharp rocks on the ocean bottom, or breaking, owing 
to an undue strain. There is much that could be written 
of the risks to which the cables are exposed even when 
they have been well and truly laid. The cause that finally 
wrecked the first cable, the use of excessive electric 
currents, has been successfully surmounted, but there is still 
the mischance that an anchor may foul the cable and tear 
it to a hopeless tangle. Another difficulty that has to be met 
with is that the cable gets covered with marine life, bar- 
nacles, and so forth, and several of the monsters of the deep, 
such as the sawfish and the teredo, appear to regard the 
cable as their larder, while sharks have on more occasions 
than one savagely bitten the line, leaving a few teeth in the 
intestines of the sheathing as a memento of the encounter. 
For an account of the dehcacy and mechanical beauty of 
the many instruments used in connection with submarine 
telegraphy, for the operation of which it is necessary only 



262 All About Engineering 

to use the smallest currents, you must turn to Mr. Charles 
Bright 's works on telegraphy.* 

I must dismiss, too, in a few words the grand conceptions 
of Mr. Bright for an All-Red Cable Route that would 
maintain a band of cables throughout the British Empire 
entirely under British control, and of Sir Henniker Heaton, 
who has dreamt of establishing a cable service of penny-a- 
word telegrams throughout the confines of our Empire. 
Of their tireless efforts to realise these great ideals you can 
read from day to day in the newspapers. 

There is one more aspect of submarine telegraphy, how- 
ever, to which I would refer. The cables pass through the 
desolate wastes of ocean, and in reading of these far-off 
waters and lands one touches on strange experiences that 
one marvels at and must leave unexplained. In the middle 
of the Pacific Ocean there lies a group of islands among 
which the Pacific cable emerges from the ocean. The land 
is surf-swept, a haunt for the most part of sea-birds, but 
it was carefully surveyed years ago at the time the Pacific 
cable was projected. It is now only a few months ago 
that the question of the ownership of one of these islands, 
Palmyra Island, was brought into dispute, and I had the task 
of trying to discover its early history. I am indebted to the 
editor of the Morning Post for permission to reprint here one 
of the results of my research. 

" The contemporary story of Edmund Fanning's dis- 
covery of Palmyra Island, which is contained in his 
* Voyages Round the World ' (New York, 1833), is not," 
I then wrote, " without interest at the present moment. 

*" Submarine Telegraphs " (Crosby Lockwood and Son), "The Story of 
the Atlantic Cable" (Hodder and Stoughton), and "The Life Story of Charles 
Tilston Bright " (Constable and Co., Ltd.) 



Cable Laying 263 

After describing his discovery and naming of Fanning 
Island and Washington Island, Captain Fanning gives the 
following account of his experiences on June 14, 1798 : 

" ' At nine o'clock in the evening, my customary 
hour for retiring, I had, as usual, repaired to my berth, 
enjoying perfect good health, but between the hours of 
nine and ten found myself, without being sensible of any 
movement or exertion in getting there, on the upper steps 
of the companion-way. I suddenly awoke, and after ex- 
changing a few words with the commanding officer, who 
was walking on deck, returned to my berth, thinking how 
strange it was, for I never before had walked in my sleep. 
Again, I was occupying the same position, to the great 
surprise of the of&cer (not more so than to myself), after 
having slept some twenty minutes or the like ; here, upon 
observing the glittering stars overhead, and feeling the 
night air, I was preparing to return to the cabin, after 
answering in the affirmative his inquiry whether Captain 
Fanning was well. Why, or what it was, that had thus 
brought me twice to the companion-way I was quite unable 
to tell, but that there should not be any portion of vigilance 
unobserved by those then in charge, I inquired how far 
he was able to see around the ship ? He repUed that, although 
a httle hazy, he thought he could distinctly see land or 
danger a mile or two, adding that the look-out was regularly 
relieved every half-hour, in reply to my question if such was 
the case. There was something very singular, and, with a 
strange sensation upon my mind after what had passed, 
I again returned to my berth. What was my astonishment 
on finding myself the third time in the same place ! Yet 
with this addition : I had now, without being aware of it. 



264 All About Engineering 

put on my outer garments and hat ; it was then I con- 
ceived some danger was nigh at hand, and determined me 
upon laying the ship to for the night.' 

" Captain Fanning describes how he then slept peacefully 
till daylight, when he came on deck, and the Betsey pro- 
ceeded on her voyage. He continues : 

" ' All was activity and bustle, except with the helms- 
man ; even the man on the look-out was, for a moment, 
called from his especial charge . . . This induced me to 
walk ... to the lee quarter, not expecting, however, to 
make any discovery, but solely to take a look ahead ; 
in a moment the whole truth flashed before my eyes, as 
I caught sight of breakers mast high directly ahead, and 
towards which our ship was fast saihng. Instantly, the 
helm was put a-lee, the yards all braced up, and sails trimmed 
by the wind, as the man aloft, in a stentorian voice, called 
out : " Breakers ! Breakers ahead ! " . . . The ship was 
now sailing on the wind, and the roaring of the herculean 
breakers under her lee at a short mile's distance was dis- 
tinctly heard, as the officer to whom the events of the 
past night were familiar came aft to me, and with the voice 
and look of a man deeply impressed with some solemn 
convictions, said : " Surely, sir. Providence has a care over 
us, and has kindly directed us again in the road of safety. 
. . . Why, sir, half an hour's further run from where we 
lay by in the night would have cast us on that fatal spot, 
where we must all certainly have been lost. If we have, 
because of the morning haze around the horizon, got so 
near this appalling danger in broad daylight, what, sir, but 
the hand of Providence has kept us clear of it through the 
night ? " With him I perfectly agreed.' " 



CHAPTER XVIII 

MARINE SALVAGE — ^THE MILWAUKEE AND THE SUEVIC— 
SAVING BULLION FROM THE OCEANA 

There are few of us, indeed, who have not felt the romance 
of the sea. Most of us at one time or another have pictured 
ourselves as pirates, sailing under the flag of the skuU 
and crossbones ; or, if our thoughts have turned to kindlier 
channels, we have in imagination pursued the pirates to 
their lairs, and set the sea free for peaceful traffic. Others 
of us, steeped in the romance of hidden treasure, have 
revelled in the adventures of Stevenson's " Treasure Island," 
and, maybe, have enjoyed reading the adventures experi- 
enced by Mr. E. F. Knight and his friends when in actual 
fact they set out in search of hidden treasure on the Island 
of Trinidad. 

An account of the salvage work achieved during the 
last twenty-five or thirty years would amaze the sea- 
captain of a hundred years ago. Scientific knowledge has 
advanced so rapidly that the impossible of yesterday is 
the practicable of to-day. Astonishing feats of ship-surgery 
have been accomplished, but these come rather into the 
sphere of the shipbuilder than of the salvor. 

There was the case, for instance, when the Netherston, 
with a cargo of benzine on board, blew up in the China 
Seas. Her decks were blown out of her and her hull buckled 
in ; the vessel appeared a hopeless wreck, and she was 

265 



266 All About Engineering 

abandoned off Singapore. All the bright metal, the copper 
pipes, and so forth were looted by the natives, but the 
engineer who had been sent out by an enterprising British 
firm was undaunted by these difficulties. He strengthened 
the ship by running girders across her. He substituted 
iron steam-pipes for the copper ones that had been taken 
away, replaced the decks with heavy wooden planking, 
and covered them with canvas to keep the water out, 
and within a month of taking charge at Singapore he 
had the derelict on the high seas on her way back to 
England. 

I might quote you case upon case of the way in which 
the salvage engineers have had to call on the varied resources 
that the engineer has at his disposal. He is, in fact, the 
apostle of the pump, of the centrifugal pump that he 
uses to drive water out of a vessel when he has repaired 
the rents in her side, or when he builds a coffer-dam round 
the vessel to repair the damage before attempting to raise 
her, and of the air-pump by which he can force the water 
out of a ship's hold and float her into safety. 

A case, however, to which I want to refer rather more 
fully is that of the Milwaukee. She was a large freight vessel, 
and came on to the rocks off Peterhead. With bad weather 
and the full force of the Atlantic swell, she bumped her 
nose heavily on the rocks, and when the Liverpool Salvage 
Association came to try and effect a rescue, her bows were 
battered beyond repair. This, if ever, was a case for enter- 
prise. The salvage officers realised that with the equi- 
noctial gales coming on, haste meant everything. There 
was, they saw, one chance to save her. If only the bulk- 
heads — the partitions that divide a ship into watertight 



Marine Salvage 267 

compartments — would bear the pressure of the water, 
it was, they thought, possible to jettison the damaged 
bows, and bring the after end safe into port. Anyway, the 
experiment was worth trying, and it is no use for a salvage 
officer to be backward about taking risks. A cordon of 
dynamite was passed round the vessel just forward of 
the bridge, the explosive being enclosed in rubber tubes, 
and the object being to protect the bulkhead that was 
eventually to have to support the full pressure of the sea. 
As then in salvage work the undertaking was of a pioneer 
character, and it was a case of the salvage officers backing 
their opinion for heavy odds against the unknown, but 
when the 520 lbs. of explosives had been expended, the 
after-part of the vessel slid quietly into deep water, and 
no difficulty was experienced in towing the vessel — which, 
by the way, used her own steam as an auxiliary — into 
safety. The work was a fine tribute to the builders, as well 
as to the salvage officers, for when the question was referred 
to the builders as to whether the bulkheads were strong 
enough to withstand the strain, they had no hesitation in 
saying emphatically that this would be the case. Incident- 
ally, there was another testimony to the efficiency of their 
work, for it needed! 140 lbs. of dynamite to sever the keel- 
son, which may be regarded as the backbone of the ship. 

The salvage of the Milwaukee created a sensation in the 
shipbuilding world, for when the after portion of the vessel 
had been salved, it was an easy matter to fit new bows. 

It was only a comparatively short time later that the 
Suevic came to grief off Cornwall. She had on board a 
cargo of frozen meat, and as her bows were hopelessly 
locked on the rocks the Liverpool Salvage Association 



268 All About Engineering 

pursued the policy that had been so successful on a previous 
occasion, cut away the damaged bows with dynamite, and 
towed the after-end of the vessel back into Southampton. 
The work was a notable one, for the after-end of the Suevic 
was carried back to port on compressed air, and forced 
to trust to her decks and bulkheads to carry her weight 
during the passage. From first-hand knowledge, I know 
that her crew were nervous about the risk, and that it was 
only through the infectious courage of the officers in charge 
that they were willing to serve on board the mutilated 
vessel. It may, perhaps, be of interest to you to know 
that Captain Young, the officer responsible, gave it to 
me as his opinion that the safety of ships at sea would be 
greatly increased by designing them to withstand a 
strain from below upwards, instead of primarily, as 
at present, a strain from before backwards, the idea 
being that in the event of a ship sustaining damage to 
her bottom, she should sink until the deck and the 
hatches above the injured part were even well below 
water, when air-pumps installed on the upper deck would 
deliver a continual stream of compressed air, so that on 
this, as a cushion, the injured vessel could be kept afloat 
upon her deck until she reached harbour. This was one 
of the lessons of the Suevic salvage, for when the hatches 
had been specially strengthened, they found that it was 
strong enough to support this strain, and the inference 
was made that on these lines a vessel might in many cases 
effect her own salvage at sea. 

My personal connection with the Suevic began in 
October, 1907. I was working on the Standard at the time, 
and the offer was made me to travel round from Belfast 



Marine Salvage 269 

with the new bows. None of us had much idea what the 
trip would mean, and I remember leaving London one 
Friday night, expecting to be back in town early in the 
following week. Bad weather delayed us at Belfast, and 
it was not until Sunday that our voyage actually started. 
Throughout the trip, we were ready at any moment to 
send a message ashore, but, as a matter of fact, we had no 
opportunity of communicating anywhere until we succeeded 
in reaching Southampton. Here is the impression of the 
feat as it appealed to me when I was fresh from witness- 
ing it. 

In preface, I should state that the new bows had to be 
towed from Belfast to Southampton, the broad end fore- 
most, because it was found by experiment that when 
towage was attempted bows forward the vessel yawed so 
much as to make the task impracticable. 

When the manager for Messrs. Harland and Wolff, I 
then wrote, gave the order to cast off from the Alexandra 
Wharf in the Queen's Island shipbuilding yard at Belfast 
he instituted the third stage of a feat unique in the history 
of marine engineering. 

The first achievement, the blasting off of the fore-end 
of the iU-fated Suevic, when she struck on the Stag Rock, 
has been fuUy reported ; mention has been made of the 
building and launching of the new fore-end in Messrs. 
Harland and Wolff's yards at Belfast, and now the third 
task, that of towing this portion from Belfast to Southamp- 
ton, has been satisfactorily completed. This is a feat of 
which the builders may weU be proud. Two gales and 
contrary winds, which have lasted almost throughout the 
voyage, have subjected the bulkheads to excessive strain, 



270 All About Engineering 

but not a drop of water found its way into bur bilges. The 
strength of adverse winds and swell was so great that on 
two occasions the tugs became quite unmanageable, while 
the swell tore two great V-shaped pieces out of the plates 
which project out before our bulkheads. 

The voyage was full of incident, and caused great 
anxiety to those responsible for the vessel's safety. Be- 
fore we got properly out of Belfast into the open sea, we 
were forced to lie by for about twenty hours, waiting for the 
wind to becom^e favourable, or at least to abate some- 
thing of its fury, and it was not until early on Sunday 
morning that we paid out our deep-sea tackle to the tugs, 
hove anchor, and definitely started on our way. The weight 
of the Suevic's fore end made it necessary to have specially 
designed towing gear. Four lengths of the Suevic's anchor 
chain were utilised and made fast on either side to two 
pairs of bollards, while their extremities were joined to an 
enormous ring. Fastened to this by specially forged shackles 
were two left-handed 5-inch cables, which completed the 
to wing-gear on board the Suevic. When we were ready to 
make our start for the open sea, the Blazer (Captain Jones) 
and the Pathfinder (Captain Foster, the designer of the 
towing gear) came alongside. From each tug a " messenger " 
brought up a 5-inch cable furnished with a shackle similar 
to ours. The two pairs of shackles were placed together, 
the cotter pins were driven in and hammered over to keep 
everything in position. The order, " Let go ! " was shouted 
out, and passed back to the man in charge of the windlass, 
and with a heavy splash the wire cables dropped over- 
board and the tugs steamed out in front, while our anchor 
was still fixed to ensure that all was in order to bear the 



Marine Salvage 271 

great strain that was to be put upon the gear. Two 14-inch 
manila cables completed the equipment, giving to our 
tackle, in all, a length of 170 fathoms. 

It was about 7 p.m. on Sunday when we first ex- 
perienced severe weather. Without any warning, half a 
gale sprang up from the south-west, and torrents of almost 
tropical rain swept our decks, driven with the full force 
of the wind. Such was the violence of the storm which met 
us almost opposite the Chickens that the rain forced an 
entrance into the captain's cabin through the closed door, 
and settled in large pools upon the floor. By 11 o'clock the 
violence of the storm had abated, and the officers who had 
hurried upon the bridge ventured to leave the ship in 
charge of the watch. 

The respite was short-lived. By 4 o'clock in the 
morning the storm redoubled in fury, and for several hours 
we drifted astern at between three and four knots, 
while for the first time the Suevic began to pitch and toss 
in the heavy seas. By 7 a.m. it was discovered that we had 
drifted back some thirty miles. We at once signalled to the 
accompanying tugs to put us upon the starboard tack, 
but their reply was that they were unmanageable in the 
gale. On board the Suevic life-boats were made ready 
in case of emergency, and we sent a message : " We are 
casting off Pathfinder' s hawser," our object being to allow 
the Blazer to pull straight ahead, and so avoid the necessity 
of the two tugs having to work at a mechanical disadvan- 
tage in order to avert collision. Before, however, the order 
was carried into effect the weather showed signs of im- 
proving, the tugs again came together, and we slowly 
moved forward, churning the sea in front of us into an 



272 All About Engineering 

expanse of swirling foam. Though we had signalled the 
Chickens at 9 o'clock with rockets, it was past midday 
on Monday before the Isle of Man was lost to view. 

During the storm I went down into the hold abaft 
our bulkhead. Behind the massive red steel plates were 
enormous beams of Pensacola pitch-pine wood, 14 inches 
square, specially arranged to bear the strain of towing the 
vessel stern first into Southampton. All through the voyage 
two men stood by the bulkheads with candles mounted 
on slips of pine wood, perfectly indifferent to the roar of 
the waves against the plates, which sounded like peals 
of thunder reverberating through the hollows of the vessel. 
They were watching the plates intently, and had instruc- 
tions to inform the officers on the bridge at the first sign 
of leakage, so that pumping operations might at once 
begin. In the uncertain light cast by the candles, one 
could barely distinguish the enormous beams looming into 
the distance, and beyond them the pipes of the salvage 
pumps, swollen with water, and thus ready to start empty- 
ing the bilges in case of emergency. 

Serious as the first storm on Sunday night had proved, 
the full force of the Atlantic swell which we experienced 
off the Cornish coast for twelve hours gave a far severer 
test to the seamanship of our strange craft. At 2 p.m. 
on Wednesday we began to roll ; by 4.30 we were rolling 
12 degrees to 15 degrees', having a few degrees list to port. 
By 6, we registered 23 degrees, and before g o'clock the 
clinometer had recorded 27 degrees. With the first big 
roU at 6 o'clock, there was a loud crash of broken glass 
and crockery. Nothing that was breakable survived in 
the cook's galley, and everything that could move in the 



Marine Salvage 273 

ship rolled from side to side. The refrigerating pipes, which 
we were carr3dng in the hold as ballast, crashed together, 
raising an incessant din, and, though we had the fiddles 
on the solitary table available for messing, nothing was 
able to withstand the motion. Even the 12-inch pipe of 
the salvage pump, which was firmly lashed to the hatches, 
broke loose during the night, and had a little play until it 
was secured. All the ofiicers were on the bridge, and Mr. 
Beattie, the engineer in charge of the pumps, stayed up 
all night to see that the jacks kept the chains by which 
his engines were secured fast and taut. Before midnight 
a roll of as much as 33 degrees was obtained, and this on a 
Bell's patent clinometer, which, destroying the effect of 
inertia movements, gives the true reading, a reading some 
ID degrees lower than that obtained by the ordinary pen- 
dulum clinometer. Sleep under these conditions was out of 
question, and none of us turned in until we rounded the Long- 
ships, and the heavy Atlantic swell was no longer on our beam. 
During the routine of the voyage, while we were 
beating up against adverse winds and contrary swell, there 
was an extraordinary want of reality about the ship. 
The look-out man always hesitated whether to announce 
a vessel as being on our port or starboard bow. The smoke 
from the little donkey engines that worked our winches 
made our decks resemble those of a torpedo boat,*while the 
funnels for the salvage boilers in front were the very image 
of the primitive engines designed by Watt and Stephenson. 
One started to go for'ard, and was brought up against a 
void amidships, with nothing but the towing gear in front 
and a great expanse of boiling foam 30 feet or 40 feet 
beneath. The absence of all vibration from the engines 



274 AH About Engineering 

completed this illusion of unreality, while as the seas struck 
our bulkheads a shiver ran through the ship that was scarcely 
distinguishable from the shocks the Suevic experienced when 
she bumped on the Stag Rock off the Lizard. 

During the whole of the voyage we have been fortunate 
in having a brilliant moon that has often enabled us to 
pick up the outline of the distant shore. It was early on 
Thursday morning that we made the Lizard on our port 
bow, but as it was high tide, it was impossible to see how 
much remained of the ill-fated Suevic, and a few hours 
later we sighted Falmouth, where the hapless Mohegan 
struck upon the Manacles in 1898. With the exception of 
a few hours this morning, when the ship was caught in a 
mist, the weather in the Channel was all that could be 
wished. As we passed by Portland we ran through a little 
fleet of torpedo boats that studded the sea with patches 
of lights as far as the eye could see. By 1.30 we were 
opposite the Needles, and after four hours we had only 
just passed Hurst Castle. 

When I got on board the Ajax, the tug that brought 
us ashore, it was still uncertain when the Suevic would 
be able to make her berth. She had yet some 20 miles to 
go, and the ebbtide had not ceased running, though it 
was greatly reduced in force. Captain Dunlop informed 
me, as I was going, that he hoped the ship would reach 
the Old Extension by 9 o'clock this evening, or, failing 
that, by i a.m. to-morrow. There she will disembark the 
heavy gear she has brought with her as ballast, and will 
then go into dry dock to be joined to the after-portion 
of the vessel. The new forepart will be floated into its 
position, and stopped at the required distance from the 



Marine Salvage 275 

old to make up the total length of the original Suevic. 
When this has been done, only the simplest portion of 
the task remains. The two parts of the Suevic will be 
fitted together in dry dock in Southampton, and there the 
whole structure from the keel upwards, including the 
plates in the shell, the decks, the double bottom, and also 
the keelson, on which so much of the resisting power of a 
vessel depends, will occupy exactly the position which 
was assigned them when the original Suevic left the builders' 
yards in 1900. Extra riveting, however, and an increase 
in the number of rivets that are to be driven in by mechanical 
means will make the vessel even more resistant to the strain 
and stress of weather than she proved herself to be when 
she lay bumping heavily on the jagged abutments of the 
Lizard. Finally, to ensure that the strength of the new struc- 
ture may be maintained, a new section of the keel to overlap 
both new and old portions of the vessel will be added. 

So ended my connection with the Suevic, one of the 
pleasantest experiences that I have ever enjoyed. 

The next opportunity I had of seeing salvage work at 
first hand was last year, when the Liverpool Salvage 
Association were at work salving the specie that went 
down with the P. and O. ss. Oceana after she had come 
into collision with the Pisaqua. 

On this occasion I was fortunate enough to be on 
board the Ranger on the first day when she made a really 
successful haul. As this work is entirely different from 
the two classes of salvage that I have hitherto described, 
and as diving is an essential part of several branches of 
engineering, I am including the impression I wrote at 
the time when I was firesh from witnessing the work. 



276 AH About Engineering 

The Ranger, the well-known salvage ship of the Liver- 
pool Salvage Association, I wrote from Newhaven, sur- 
passed her own record this morning, and in an hour's 
work recovered ten boxes of gold worth about £40,000, 
and a smaller box, believed to contain silver articles. By 
the courtesy of Captain Young, I was able to go out on the 
Ranger and watch the actual diving operations from the 
Beaulieu, which is accompanying her, and from whose 
decks the salvage work is being done. 

We left our berth in Newhaven Harbour about 2 o'clock 
this morning. There was a good sailing breeze from the 
south-west, and the speed with which the clouds were 
scudding across the face of the moon suggested the prob- 
ability of a stronger breeze that would seriously interfere 
with diving operations. The object was to reach the scene 
of the wreck so much in advance of the low-water-slack 
that the Beaulieu could be moored in position for work 
to begin at slack water. 

The night air made a light breakfast at 4 a.m. a welcome 
interlude to standing on deck watching the rays of the 
Beachy Head light flash along the coast, and the lights of 
the Royal Sovereign and the lightship stationed by the 
wreck grow plain and distinct. The Beaulieu, that had 
followed us up from Newhaven, was alongside before 
5 o'clock, and as the Ranger had now let her anchor cable 
clatter its way out through the hawse-pipe, we transferred 
to the tug, and proceeded to the actual wreck. 

The Oceana presents special salvage difficulties, for, it 
will be remembered, she was run over, after she had foun- 
dered, by a sailing vessel, and her decks have been littered 
with debris. In the circumstances, it is particularly impor- 



Marine Salvage 277 

tant that the salvage vessel should be brought within a 
few feet of the ideal position. After anchoring as near as 
possible to the desired spot a line was made fast to the 
two remaining masts of the Oceana, and with this, as a sort 
of bridle, the nose of the BeauUeu was drawn close in, so 
that her bows were exactly as wanted. To steady her, 
and to ensure that she should not shift as a result of changes 
in the tide, a line was passed from the stern to a buoy 
that is moored close by. 

To the outsider the period of waiting that follows the 
preparation is unpleasantly nervous work. Stationed on 
the bridge you have the double advantage of being out of 
the way, and of getting a good view of all proceedings. 
There are a dozen or eighteen men scattered about the 
tug. Two or three of them are standing chatting idly by 
the pumps which are to supply the divers with air. Half a 
dozen of the crew are in the Ranger's boat, which they 
have tied to one of the Oceana's masts, waiting to run a 
line, or to get what may be wanted from the Ranger. The 
rest, the officer in charge among them, are in the bows 
watching the water seething as if in a cauldron, with the 
weight of the tide catching the sunken ship and eddying 
round and over it. The divers are on the bridge, broad- 
chested men of middle height. They have an inchoate 
appearance. The khaki- coloured diving suits recall the 
rough cloth hose of a shrunken shanked Elizabethan, their 
red woollen caps suggest the Neapolitan boatmen, and 
the serviceable sheath-knives which they carry in their 
belts indicate the brigand. They sit waiting on the bridge, 
taking no particular interest in the proceedings, except in 
so far as the leading line to the hold is concerned. There 



278 All About Engineering 

is nothing to say except that the tide is still running 
strongly. The breeze which threatened to strengthen has 
as yet not done so. One or other of them at last makes a 
move, saying that he may as well see what it is like. He 
repeats the remark a minute or two later, moves down 
from the bridge on to the narrow deck, and is helped into 
his heavily weighted boots. Someone calls to the men at 
the pumps just to " blow through." The handles are twirled 
rapidly, the hissing of the air as it rushes through the 
pipes to the helmet indicates that all is well, and the men 
steady down to a rhythmic stroke. Two large lead weights 
are attached to the diver's shoulders ; the life-line is tied 
round his waist ; his helmet is screwed home ; it is tapped 
by the " dresser " to let him know that everything is made 
fast, he is helped over the ladder at the ship's side, and he 
is there in the water, with helmet still emerging for a few 
seconds, and he plunges a little, like a large, ungainly fish. 
As he disappears beneath the surface his helmet throws out 
large bubbles of air ; as he goes deeper the bubbles of air 
break up into little globules, turning the sea milky. 

The men who have the diver's life in their hands now 
claim attention, the two of them who are turning the wheels 
of the pump with mechanical regularity, and are going 
to keep the same steady motion for an hour, and the two 
at the ship's side, one of them feeling the life-line as a 
fisherman feels for a bite, and the other paying out the air- 
tube, keeping it hand-tight to prevent fouling. In watching 
the arrangements for the first diver, one scarcely notices 
that the other is being helped over the side, and that he 
has gone below to co-operate in the recovery of the bullion. 

A fresh and more rational interest attaches to the 



Marine Salvage 279 

bubbles as the officer forward remarks that the tide cannot 
be very bad down below, as the bubbles are coming up 
almost straight, and you look to see how the Ranger is 
lying to her anchor, and compare her direction with the 
movements of the bubbles. It is about 6.40, and the 
wind is blowing strong enough to make it feel chilly 
on the bridge and to give a slight roll to the BeauUeu as 
she pulls at her cables, but not enough to give appre- 
ciable motion to the Ranger lying a couple of hundred yards 
away, or to put white crests on the waves. There is a 
hail from one of the men holding the life-line, " Lower 
away ! " It is hardly correct to speak of it as a hail. It 
comes rather in the tone in which an officer makes a trifling 
alteration in the course he has set, and the men in charge 
of the little derrick forward lower a chain along the guide 
line that leads to where the buUion is lying. The chain, 
though we cannot see it, is caught by one of the divers and 
passed on by him to his mate, who is working some few 
fathoms beneath him, and the man at the life-line gives 
the instruction, " Haul away ! " The men in the bows haul 
on the rope ; it catches for a moment, is cleared by the 
diver below, and in a few seconds a box of specie can be 
seen on the surface of the water. A couple of turns are 
taken round the winch, there is a cloud of steam at the 
side of the ship, and the box numbered and marked " XOX, 
Bombay," is gentled over the side. Before the box is on 
deck the man at the life-line sings out, " Lower again ! " 
and so the process continues till one loses all sense of un- 
easiness as to the fortunes of the men below, and forgets 
all sense of their danger in the interest of speculating as 
to whether they will beat their previous day's record. 



28o All About Engineering 

It is quick work bringing up specie, once the start has 
been made, I timed the men at the job, and on one occasion 
a box of gold was on the deck within 2f minutes of the 
chain being passed over the side. The work on the Oceana, 
where the men have to support a pressure of 40 lbs. to 
the square inch, in addition to the atmospheric pressure, 
is very exhausting. At the end of an hour's work they 
had brought up eleven boxes, ten of them containing gold- 
The weight of the metal was such that, when it was all 
collected on the starboard side, it gave the tug an appreci- 
able list. I feel rather proud of being able to say that I 
have been on a boat which had a considerable list 
owing to the gold packed on her deck. While it was 
being brought up there was constant communication 
between the BeauUeu and the Ranger, all conducted by 
semaphoring. It is matter of pride with the officers and 
men of the Liverpool Salvage Association that their 
discipline and knowledge are such that they can do 
their work silently. There is no shouting of orders on 
board. Each man in a responsible position is an expert 
at his work, knows what is expected of him, and does it. 

The only sign of hurry that I saw to-day was when 
the divers came on board. It is a struggle for them to 
get up the ladder, with their heavy weights when they are 
already exhausted, and they are quickly helped on board 
and released from their helmets. When the divers came 
up to-day at 7.40 they were thoroughly pleased with 
their work, and as they climbed back to the bridge 
their first demand was for a pipe of tobacco. The effect 
of the strain is curious. It amounts to mere fatigue, the 
pressure to which the divers are subjected while working 



Marine Salvage 281 

below making the same sort of demand on them as severe 
exercise. 

They described to me the method of their work in 
this particular instance. One of them gets hold of the 
cases in the bullion room, while the other works at a lesser 
depth, sees that his lines keep disentangled, acts as a 
channel of communication between him and the ship, 
passes the chain on that is let down from above, and guides 
the salved material up until it is clear to be lifted to the 
surface. It was a source of satisfaction to them to find that 
they had stayed down as long as there was any chance of 
doing useful work. Five minutes after they were back on 
board, the tide was running with a strength that indicated 
clearly enough to all on board the Beaulieu that the con- 
ditions below must have been such as to make any further 
work than the men had done impossible. Even during the 
time that they were working the stream of air bubbles 
moved clean away from the tug, so that it was scarcely 
possible to recognise where they rose to the surface. 

The Beaulieu, her work done, returned to the Ranger, 
and the bullion was transferred. And so we returned to 
Eastbourne. Shortly after I reached the shore I looked 
back, and saw the Ranger and the Beaulieu returning to 
the scene of the wreck with a view to resuming operations 
at the slack of high water. Unfortunately, it was found 
that the strength of the current then was such that the 
attempt had to be abandoned. 

The Ranger is an old Navy ship. She was adapted 
some twenty years ago to her present purpose, and has 
a full equipment of the latest pneumatic tools. The 
pumps she usually carries^ — they were at the moment landed 



282 All About Engineering 

at Newhaven, so that her decks might be clear for the work 
on the Oceana — are run by internal combustion engines and 
can deal with 3,500 tons of water an hour. She also 
carries a motor launch, and among the best-known 
salvage operations in which she has done service are those 
undertaken in connection with the Montagu, the Gladiator, 
the Suevic, the Hibernia, and the Minnehaha. 

From these accounts, which are but few out of many, 
that I have been able to put before you of salvage work, 
you will have realised how dependent the salvage engineer 
is on the elements for the varied tasks that he finds set him. 
It is seldom that any two jobs on which he is engaged are 
alike. He must go to the scene of the disaster that awaits 
his services, and, with the equipment he carries with him, 
he and his crew must, if need be, take their lives in their 
hands, and try to wrest from the sea the spoil it is threaten- 
ing to devour. The master of the salvage vessel must be 
unrivalled in resource. With a perfect seamanship, a sound 
knowledge of engineering principles, and an unerring instinct 
to guide him as to what is and what is not practicable, he 
must be prepared instantly to lay his plans, and to put 
them into execution, and the whole time he is at work 
he will be harassed by the feeling that, after all, through 
no fault of his own, the sea may rob him of his prize at the 
moment he thinks it to be within his grasp. Without fear 
of contradiction, one may safely assert that there is no man 
that puts to sea that is as adequately trained for the work 
he has to do, no everyday engineering task that places so 
constant a strain on the men who are engaged in it, and no 
branch throughout the wide range of engineering practice 
that is so full of romantic interest. 



CHAPTER XIX 

LIGHTHOUSES — THE EDDYSTONE AND THE SKERRYVORE — 
PILE LIGHTHOUSES AND BUOYS 

Professor Archibald Barr, when he was President of 
the engineering section of the British Association last 
year, considered in his presidential address an aspect of 
his subject that should be constantly in the minds of every 
engineer. He was speaking of the artistic side of engineer- 
ing, and contended that a structure of any kind that was 
intended to serve a useful end should have the beauty of 
appropriateness for the purpose it is to serve. It should 
tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, and if its character 
be such that it can be permitted to tell the whole truth, 
so much the better. It should be beautiful in the sense 
in which we commonly use the term with respect to a 
machine, for a mechanical device is beautiful only if it 
strikes us as accomplishing the end for which it was designed 
in the simplest and most direct way. Among many other 
illustrations of his point he referred to ships, reminding 
his hearers that there was a time when the hulls and riggings 
and sails of ships were lavishly ornamented, but that now 
the figurehead, the last remnant of barbaric taste, has 
disappeared. This and other examples, he argued, illus- 
trated the contention that the attainment of the highest 
efficiency brought with it the greatest artistic merit. 

Professor Barr's remarks came into my mind when 

283 



284 All About Engineering 

I was trying to analyse why it is that the Hghthouse appeals 
so strongly to our imagination. It is partly, no doubt, from 
its steady rhythmical performance of its functions that 
make it possible for ships to go safely about their busi- 
ness in the darkness of the night. There is the mystery, 
too, that surrounds the loneliness of the men living solitary 
amid a waste of heaving water ; but the lighthouse attracts 
us chiefly, I think, because it comes up to Professor Barr's 
standard of artistic excellence, by accomplishing the end 
for which it is designed in the simplest and most direct 
way. 

The origins of lighthouse construction are lost in anti- 
quity. There is the beautiful passage in the " Iliad " where 
Homer, describing how Achilles seized his shield to go and 
avenge the death of Patroclus, writes : 

" The huge and massy shield he next uptook, 
Wherefrom as from the orbed moon stream rays. 
So stream' d the light ; or as to seamen flames. 
In sheepfolds upon mountains kindled high 
Show from the ocean whilst storms drive them forth 
Loth o'er the fish-filled billows far from home." 

The passage, especially when read in conjunction with 
others, may, I think, fairly be taken as evidence that the 
idea of the lighthouse was familiar to the early Greeks. 

The Pharos or lighthouse at Alexandria, as Stevenson 
pointed out, may be regarded as the oldest lighthouse. It 
was looked upon by the ancients as one of the Seven 
Wonders of the World, and was built in the reign of Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, about 300 years before the Christian era, 
and Strabo relates that Sostratus, a friend of the royal 



Lighthouses 285 

family, was the architect. He describes it as built in a 
wonderful manner, in many stories of white stone, on a 
rock forming the promontory of the island Pharos, and 
says that the bmlding bore the inscription : " Sostratus of 
Cnidos, the son of Dexiphanes, to the Gods, the Saviours, 
for the benefit of seamen." He concludes his notice of it 
by describing the neighbouring shores as low and encum- 
bered with shoals and snares, and as calling for the estab- 
lishment of a lofty and bright beacon, as a sign for sailors 
arriving from the ocean to guide them to the entrance 
into the haven. The light was probably furnished by a fire 
burnt at the top, a way comparable with what used to be 
the practice on land lighthouses in this country. 

The engineer who undertakes to construct a lighthouse 
at sea has a difficult and dangerous piece of work before 
him. He must be able to stand knocking about at all sorts 
of hours in small boats on rough seas. Day after day he 
will make the attempt to work on the foundations, but the 
wind will spring up and at once stop all progress. He must 
keep his work throughout the whole time of the building 
in such a state that as little damage as possible will result 
even if a gale sets in. He must risk the danger of a sudden 
storm, that will sweep him and his men off the rock on 
which they are working into the sea. He must so plan his 
work that as little as possible of it is done at the site, but 
that the material is ready prepared on shore, and only 
requires to be fitted into its place. 

These difficulties had all to be faced by John Smeaton 
when he set out to build the Eddystone Lighthouse in 1759, 
and in addition to these he had to deal with three diffi- 
culties : one that the work was of a pioneer character. 



286 All About Engineering 

another that he had to use sail instead of steam for his 
ships, and the third that his seamen and workmen were 
constantly in danger of being seized by the press-gang 
for the Navy. 

The Eddystone reef lies some 14 miles off Plymouth, 
in the track of the Channel shipping, and before the con- 
struction of the lighthouse was a constant source of peril, 
while since then it has been an invaluable guide to navi- 
gation. The first attempt to light it was in 1696, when 
Henry Winstanley built on it a house of wood and stone. 
The structure stood for seven years, but in the terrible 
storm of 1703 it was swept away with Winstanley himself 
and the workmen and keepers. Then there was Rudyard's 
house built in 1708, also of wood and stone, but it was 
burnt down in 1753. 

That the authorities recognised the difficulty of the 
task before them in building a fresh structure is plain 
from the methods they followed to find an engineer. John 
Weston had the matter in hand, and, as Smeaton tells us 
in the excellent account he has left of his work, " he con- 
sidered that this was not a work proper to be advertised ; 
and that to reinstate it would require a person who from 
natural genius had a turn for contrivance in the mechanical 
branches of science ; who would not stand in need of being 
led by the actual execution of a similar performance ; but 
who, solely from the nature of the thing, would be likely 
to find out the proper methods of executing a building of 
the like kind with that which had approved itself upon an 
experience of nearly fifty years ; such a person being the 
most likely to discern how far the late building was defective, 
how far these defects were capable of a remedy, and what 



Lighthouses 287 

improvements could be made upon the former construc- 
tion." Weston approached the Royal Society, and Smeaton, 
a relatively unknown man, was asked to take on the work. 
The first question to be decided was whether the light- 
house should be of wood and stone, or entirely of stone. 
Smeaton strongly favoured the latter view, and carried his 
point, but the idea among many people was that the strain 
on the structure from the violence of the waves was so 
great that only a pliant substance like wood could bear it. 

Smeaton's ideal was to erect what to all intents would 
be a monolith, to build his structure in such a way, in fact, 
that the strain on any portion of it would be borne equally 
by the whole building, and with this in view he framed a 
plan by which all the stones were dovetailed into one another 
and the whole engrafted similarly on to the rock. 

It is hard for anyone not an expert to realise the diffi- 
culties against which Smeaton had to contend. The first 
trouble was that the survey of the reef proved inaccurate 
and had all to be examined afresh. Then there was the 
question of the material to be employed. Portland stone 
seemed a suitable material, but at the time when 
Smeaton was determining on his choice, the dockyard 
officials drew his attention to a piece of Portland stone 
that had just been taken out of the dock walls at Plymouth. 
The specimen was drilled with a great number of holes, 
similar to those made by worms in ships, and it was found 
on investigation, that they were due to a shellfish which 
made an entry into the stone, and then, as it grew, pro- 
ceeded to enlarge the recess in which it lodged. Eventually, 
a satisfactory stone was, selected. On August 5, 1756, the 
work was started, and a beginning was made to cut into 



288 All About Engineering 

the rock for the foundations. And here a fresh point arose. 
While matters could clearly have been expedited by making 
use of gunpowder, Smeaton decided that there was a danger 
that its use might weaken portions of the reef that were 
required for building into the structure, and, therefore, 
arranged that all the cutting into the reef should be done 
by hand. The work proved troublesome in the extreme, 
bad weather continually causing great waves to break upon 
the reef, but before the end of the season the chief part 
of the excavation necessary had been accomplished. 

During this first year's work on the Eddystone Smeaton 
and his workers narrowly escaped shipwreck. It was on one 
of the many days that they had found it too rough to land 
upon the rock. As Smeaton writes ; 

" For my own part, having been up most of the former 
night, and a good deal fatigued in lending a hand to the 
forenoon's operations of this day, I went down to my 
cabin, and as it had been raining as well as stormy, I dis- 
encumbered myself of my wet clothes, intending to repose 
till I heard we were come to an anchor in Fowey Harbour. 
For a space of about three hours I had the satisfaction to 
hear everything going on well overhead ; and it was no 
small addition thereto when I heard those on deck were 
altering their course in order to run into the harbour ; but 
suddenly an universal clamour and alarm arose, insomuch 
that I ran upon deck in my shirt, it then raining hard and 
blowing quite a storm. It being very dark, the first thing 
I saw was the horrible appearance of breakers, almost sur- 
rounding us : John Bowden, one of the seamen, crying 
out, ' For God's sake, heave hard at that rope if you mean 
to save your lives.' I immediately laid hold of the rope at 



Lighthouses 289 

which he himself was hauHng, as well as the other seamen, 
though he was also managing the helm ; I not only hauled 
with all my strength, but calling to and encouraging the 
workmen to do the same thing, in as little time as I have 
been describing our situation the vessel's head was brought 
round, so that we no longer faced the breakers, which, 
from the darkness of the night, were almost the only objects 
we could see ; the vessel was then heaved down by the 
stress of the wind, her gunnel to the water ; but as we 
soon found she answered her helm, we concluded she was 
making way." It was four days before the party — short 
of provisions — ^got back to land. They had, before a favour- 
ing shift of the wind occurred at the last moment, decided 
on the hazardous course of trying to make the Scilly Islands 
without a chart to guide them, and, as Smeaton remarks, 
" Our friends were not without great reason alarmed con- 
cerning us." I have quoted this adventure of Smeaton's 
at length because it illustrates in a striking way one of 
the many risks that he had to run as engineer for the 
Eddystone. 

The work of construction necessitated Smeaton's con- 
stant attention, for, in addition to the intrinsic difficulties, 
there were minor matters requiring his intervention. As 
regards a portion of the stone, for instance, the stone- 
mason refused to deliver on the ground that the masters 
of three different vessels were unwilling to undertake the 
work because of the excessive size of the stones, and 
Smeaton had to send his own men and a boat to bring 
the stone. Then, again, he had to conduct his own series 
of experiments to find a satisfactory cement. 

On another occasion when they were raising the moor- 

T 



290 All About Engineering 

ing chains of their relief vessel, and there was a danger 
of the chain breaking loose and the man who was handling 
it being cut in two, Smeaton himself undertook the dangerous 
task, as he comments : " This being the sense of my ship- 
mates, and as I always made it a rule not to put another 
upon doing what I was to do myself, the post oj honour 
naturally devolved on me." Smeaton mentions it as a 
matter of course, but as a great hindrance, that his boats 
were frequently stopped and boarded by the men-of-war's 
cutters to impress the seamen. Notwithstanding they 
were furnished with Admiralty protection, this was 
ignored by some of the officers, and it was continually 
necessary for him to approach the Commander-in-Chief 
and secure their release. He tried to get out of the 
difficulty by having the figure of a lighthouse painted on 
the mainsails of his boats. This, he found, served to protect 
the men while at sea, but left them still liable to arrest on 
land, and so he hit on the idea of giving each man a specially 
cut silver medal which he could produce to the press- 
gangs as evidence of the service on which he was employed. 
Another trouble was that the French privateers began to 
show activity, and the supplies of stone were consequently 
interrupted, and lastly a few of the workmen, though 
getting special pay in view of the danger and difficulty of 
their task, began to be mutinous and had to be dismissed. 
By the loth of June, 1757, shears and windlass had 
been fixed in position on the reef, the relief boat was safely 
at her moorings off the reef, and everything ready for 
laying the foundations. The first stone, weighing 2| tons, 
was duly laid during the morning slack of Sunday, June 12th, 
but the rise of the tide interrupting before the work was 



Lighthouses 291 

finished, it had to be shackled with cliains. The weather 
continued favourable, and in the evening it was fitted, 
bedded in mortar, fastened with trenails to the reef, and 
so completely fixed, the mortar in this case, as throughout 
the whole of the work, being coated with plaster of Paris 
to protect it until it was fully set. The weather remained 
favourable, and by Monday night the first layer or course 
of the new lighthouse had been completed. On Tuesday 
five of the thirteen stones belonging to the second course 
were landed ; one of them had been set and fixed, and 
two others had been placed in their grooves when a strong 
wind began to blow. Work was stopped at once, and 
everything had to be made as fast as possible in the short 
time available. The two stones that were in position were 
chained down, the two others chained together, strongly 
lashed to eye-bolts and tied also to the slide ladder. Mean- 
while the tackle blocks, mortar buckets, loose materials 
and tools had to be loaded into the yawls that were tossing 
alongside, threatening to be stove in at any moment, and 
the setting triangle by which the stones were hoisted and 
lowered into their places had also to be lashed. It took an 
hour and a half's hard rowing to regain the relief ship, 
though this was only 200 fathoms away from where they 
had to start rowing. On this occasion it blew a hard gale, 
but without damage to the work ; but when the same thing 
happened a day or two later, it was found that the slide 
ladder and five pieces of stone had been carried away. 
There was nothing for it but to hurry back to Plymouth, 
and set the men at work night and day again to cut stones 
of exact measurement to replace those that had been lost. 
This meant two days' delay, which, as it turned out, did 



292 All About Engineering 

not matter, as the weather continued too rough for them 
to work upon the rock. 

By August nth, the first six courses, consisting of 123 
pieces of stone, had been laid (sixty-one days having been 
taken to do it), and the work was consequently now flush 
with the rock, and a common base made on which the 
rest of the structure could be laid in regular courses. 

It is necessary to have some experience of the force of 
moving water to appreciate its magnitude, and without 
experience one would believe that stones weighing over 
a ton would be immovable by the waves. This is not the 
case, however, and as the essence of the work is the secure 
fixing of the stones, it is of interest to note the means that 
were adopted. As I have already pointed out, the stones 
were dovetailed together, but, in addition, grooves were 
cut at the sides of the stones 3 inches broad and i inch 
deep and oak wedges prepared to fit into the grooves. So, 
when a complete course had been laid and the wedges 
driven home, the course could only move as a complete 
unit. There was a danger, however, that the sea might 
wash away the underljdng mortar, however carefully pro- 
tected by plaster of Paris, and sweep the lot into the sea. 
To avoid such a disaster occurring before the mortar had 
set sufficiently to prevent it, holes were bored through the 
external part of each of the stones. When the stones were 
in position the hole was continued into the stone below 
by borers, being made I inch less in diameter and 8 inches 
or 9 inches deep. Trenails were prepared to fit them, 
carrying little wedges at their far ends. These trenails 
were then driven home, and as the wedges touched the 
bottoms of the holes they opened out the trenails, and 



Lighthouses 293 

so made them hold with such firmness that the trenails 
themselves (if inches in diameter) would break in two 
more easily than be drawn out. The heads of the trenails 
in the same way were wedged cross and cross. Permanent 
strength was given to the union between the stones by 
running liquid mortar or grout into the joints. 

Nor was this all. As I pointed out elsewhere, Smeaton's 
idea was to have the lighthouse as firm as a monolith. 
Consequently, instead of having the stones simply laid one 
upon another, and, therefore, dependent only on their 
weight and on the mortar to prevent them from shifting, 
holes I foot square and 6 inches deep were cut into the 
centre and edges of the course, and the stones dovetailed 
into one another, so that any blow of the sea acting 
horizontally could only move the course by exerting a 
force sufficient to fracture the pillars of solid rock. By 
the 29th of September the ninth course had been com- 
pleted, and the work was stopped for the winter. 

It would be wearisome were I to attempt to describe 
the later stages of the building, of the way in which 
strength was given to the upper portions of the lighthouse 
by fixing the stones together with iron cramps, of the 
slabs of Pur beck paving-stone used to cover the joints 
in the structure to ensure their remaining watertight, of 
Smeaton's narrow escapes, as when on one occasion he 
fell from the tower on to the reef below, and on another 
when he was poisoned by the fumes from the charcoal 
braziers used to melt the lead that was required. I will 
content myself with mentioning that the organisation he 
established was so perfect, that throughout the whole 
period occupied there was only one occasion on which 



294 AH About Engineering 

the work was brought to a standstill through the necessary 
material not being at hand, and on this occasion the delay 
was due to the fact that the missing stones had been swept 
away by the violence of the sea. 

Much evidence might be quoted to show the extra- 
ordinary solidity of Smeaton's 70-feet lighthouse, with its 
forty-six courses. As Smeaton himself points out, the light- 
house was in reality stronger than the rock on which it rested. 
Thus he writes : " There being a great set about the rocks- 
with wind at S.W., I could, by resting steadily against the 
wall of the lantern, perceive a sensible motion from the 
action of the sea. This I did not wonder at, having felt a 
steeple sensibly move by the ringing of bells ; but I was 
quite surprised to find that such heavy seas as now rolled 
over the adjacent rocks, without touching the building, pro- 
duced a motion nearly as sensible. This, however, fully 
convinced me of what I had for some time been led to 
think, that the Eddystone rocks have a very sensible 
degree of elasticity." 

Again, in 1762, after the lighthouse had been steadily 
in use since October i6th, 1759, Dr. Mudge, who sent 
Smeaton a report on how the building had stood through 
a tempest so terrible that it has been said, " If the Eddy- 
stone lighthouse is now standing, it will stand to the Day 
of Judgment," wrote in a postscript : " I broke open this 
letter to mention a whimsical circumstance that comes in 
my head : One of the articles (besides sugar, some flour, 
etc., which they landed at the house) was a gallipot of 
putty, to repair, as I said, the only derangement the house 
had suffered." 

Smeaton's lighthouse stood from 1759 to 1882, but in 



Lighthouses 295 

the late 'seventies of last century the reports from the 
lighthouse keepers caused serious anxiety as to the stability 
of the building. An investigation was made by Mr. Douglas, 
the engineer of the Trinity House, and others, and it was 
found that, while the tower itself showed no signs of decay, 
the rock on which it stood was being undermined by the 
action of the waves. The Trinity House resolved on build- 
ing another lighthouse in its place, but at the time there 
was one of those ill-informed popular demands that the 
Eddystone reef itself should instead be destroyed by 
blasting. The Eddystone light is, in fact, most valuable, 
not only as a leading light for ships entering Plymouth, 
but as a guide to ships for determining position, and as a 
link in the chain of lights by which the Channel is navi- 
gated. 

I will not describe in detail the construction of the new 
house. It was decided to make it taller, so that its light 
might be visible from a greater distance, and to facilitate 
the work a coffer dam was built on the site selected. Like 
his great predecessor, Smeaton, Douglas decided not to 
use any blasting process in case he might thereby weaken 
the foundations, but he had the great advantage of being 
served by steam tenders and of being able to use powerful 
rock drills driven by compressed air to excavate the rock. 
One of the precautions that he had to take was to set men 
to watch for the onset of rollers and warn the men at their 
work. When such a warning was given it was too late to 
try to get out of the way, but the men, who all wore 
lifebelts, used to hold on to the iron stanchions as the 
waves broke over them, taking care at the same time that 
their tools were not swept away. The first landing on the 



296 All About Engineering 

rock was made in February, 1879, and the work was com- 
pleted in the June of 1881. Whereas Smeaton's tower 
contained 988 tons of stone, the present one contains 4,668, 
and nine rooms, as compared with four (excluding the 
lantern) of the previous building. It is 130 feet high, or 
nearly double the height of the former. 

I have written at some length of the Eddystone light- 
house, partly because it is one of the best known of the 
lighthouses, and partly because its construction illustrated 
several of the chief difficulties against which lighthouse 
engineers have to contend. Lest you should think that 
these difficulties are unique, I will give a few details now 
of the building constructed by the author of the classic 
work on lighthouse construction, Alan Stevenson, for it 
shows that in this case, too, the risks were similar, if not 
greater, and the service rendered to seamen commensurate 
with the danger of erecting the building. 

The Skerryvore rocks, lying off Argyllshire, from time 
immemorial have been a terror to seamen, a confessedly 
incomplete list enumerating the number of vessels lost on 
them in the forty years before 1844 as thirty, and, as 
Stevenson's account of his experiences in the early stages 
of the construction are so vivid, and as there is so great 
an advantage in reading the account of the man who was 
actually in charge of the operations, I will quote the words 
as he wrote them. " The operations at Skerryvore," he 
writes in his book on " The History, Construction and 
Illumination of Lighthouses," " were commenced in the 
summer of 1838, by placing on the rock a wooden barrack, 
similar to that used by Mr. Robert Stevenson at the Bell 
Rock. The framework was erected in the course of a season 



Lighthouses 297 

on a part of the rock as far removed as possible from the 
proposed foundations of the lighthouse tower ; but in the 
great gale which occurred on the night of the 3rd November 
following it was entirely destroyed and swept from the 
rock, nothing remaining to point out its site but a few 
broken and twisted iron stanchions, and attached to one 
of them a piece of a beam so shaken and rent by dashing 
against the rock as literally to resemble a bunch of laths. 
Thus did one night obliterate the traces of a season's toil, 
and blast the hopes which the workmen fondly cherished 
of a stable dwelling on the rock, and of refuge from the 
miseries of sea-sickness which the experience of the season 
had taught many of them to dread more than death itself. 
After the removal of the roughest part of the foundations 
of the tower had been nearly completed, during almost 
two entire seasons by the party of men who lived on board 
the vessel while she lay moored off the rock, a second and 
successful attempt was made to place a second beacon 
of the same description, but strengthened by a few addi- 
tional iron ties, and a central post in a part of the rock less 
exposed to the break of the heaviest waves than the site 
of the first barrack had been. This second house braved 
the storm for several years after the works were finished, 
when it was taken down and moved from the rock to pre- 
vent any injury from its sudden destruction by the waves. 
Perched 40 feet above the wave-beaten rock in this singular 
abode, the \vriter of this little volume, with a goodly 
company of thirty men, has spent many a weary day and 
night at those times when the sea prevented anyone going 
down to the rock, anxiously looking for supplies from the 
shore, and earnestly longing for a change of the weather 



298 All About Engineering 

favourable to the recommencement of the works. For 
miles around nothing could be seen but white foaming 
breakers, and nothing heard but howling winds and lashing 
waves. At such seasons much of our time was spent in 
bed, for there alone we had effectual shelter from the 
winds and the spray which searched every cranny in the 
walls of the barrack. Our slumbers, too, were at times 
fearfully interrupted by the sudden pouring of the sea over 
the roof, the rocking of the house on its pillars, and the 
spurting of water through the seams of the doors and 
windows, symptoms which to one suddenly aroused from 
sound sleep recalled the appalling fate of the former 
barrack, which had been engulfed in the foam not 20 yards 
from our dwelling, and for a moment seemed to summon 
us to a similar fate. On two occasions in particular these 
sensations were so vivid as to cause almost everyone to 
spring out of bed ; and some of the men fled from the 
barrack by a temporary gangway to the more stable, but 
less comfortable, shelter afforded by the bare wall of the 
lighthouse tower, then unfinished, where they spent the 
remainder of the night in the darkness and the cold." 

The Skerryvore lighthouse was duly completed, thanks to 
the heroism of the builders, but from the Eddystone and the 
Skerryvore we will pass to a part of the foreshore of Eng- 
land with which many of you may be personally familiar. 
As you sail down the waters of the Thames estuary you 
pass a succession of slender-looking screw lighthouses that 
stand upon piles. These are built upon the sandbanks 
that stretch far out towards the North Sea. The seaweed 
clings to their straddling supports, and, gaunt and weather- 
beaten, they point out with their sector beams of red hght 



Lighthouses 299 

the dangers that the ships on their passage to and from 
the London river have got to avoid. The Maplin is the 
lighthouse I have specially in my mind, a conspicuous 
object that one always strains one's eyes to pick up. The 
advantage of the pile lighthouse is that the legs of the 
structure offer little or no resistance to the tides or storms, 
and the waves pass harmlessly beneath the lantern and 
the rooms in which the keepers live. The Maplin — the 
others are known as the Chapman, the Mucking, and the 
Gunfieet — ^had the eight hollow piles on which it rests 
forced into the sands, but the other lighthouses were built 
on screw-piles. In these the piles are of solid wrought iron, 
5 inches in diameter, the base being furnished with a screw 
as much as 4 feet in diameter, and a drill-shaped head. 
These lighthouses, it must be remembered, stand in shallow 
water, and though an ugly sea can get up round them, they 
do not have to meet the shock of the seas driven across the 
deep ocean. 

The approaches, too, of the Thames are guarded with 
lightships : the Mouse, with its distinctive green light, and 
the Nore, the oldest of such vessels, with its bright white 
light, and a dozen or more of others. These have had in 
their construction the best thought that the naval archi- 
tects could give them, for it is a question of construction 
largely as to whether those vessels behave well in a seaway, 
or pitch and toss so as to give continual discomfort to 
their crews. Living on a lightship makes incessant demands 
on the judgment and vigilance of the master, not only as 
regards the light for which he is responsible, but also as 
regards the length of mooring chain that he has to let out 
according to the weather. The movement of the boats is 



300 All About Engineering 

peculiar, and such that it is no uncommon thing for sea- 
men when they first take up their duties to find them- 
selves as sea-sick as the novice when first he goes to sea. 

There are the buoys, too, the lighted and the unlighted 
buoys that mark the shoals with which the estuary is 
beset. An amazing amount of scientific knowledge and 
ingenuity has gone to the construction of these, as it has 
in even greater measure to the construction of lighthouses. 
Thoroughly perfected mechanism has been devised, so that 
each light should give its own special rhythmical flash ; 
elaborate tests have been made to ensure that the best 
type of oil or gas has been selected for the work. In places 
electricity has been pressed into service. The optician 
has been called in to bring to bear his special knowledge 
with a view to providing the most satisfactory types of 
lenses, and expert advice has had to be taken, too, as to 
the best position for fixing the site of the lighthouses. It 
by no means follows that the higher the lighthouse the 
more suitable it will be for its purpose. Take, for instance, 
the case of the lighthouses on Beachy Head. The original 
lighthouse was placed high up on the top of the cliff, but 
experience showed that when fog swept up the Channel 
the light became invisible at sea, whereas by establishing a 
lighthouse lower down at the cliff foot, a far greater visi- 
bility has in such conditions been obtained. All sorts of 
ingenious devices have been coupled with the work of 
the lighthouse engineer. A device has been recently installed 
whereby in times of fog signals should be sent out below 
the surface of the sea to ships by means of special 
receivers dipping below the waters and picking up the 
waves of sound. 



Lighthouses 301 

These are matters, however, rather for the inventor 
than for the engineer. The point he has incessantly to 
bear in mind is that each piece of work he is asked to under- 
take will have its own special difficulties that he will be 
called upon to overcome, often without precedent to guide 
him. There are, however, three factors particularly that 
guide him : form, weight, and rigidity. The form of the 
lighthouse designed to bear the greatest strain should not, 
as was at one time supposed, approximate as much as 
possible to the tree trunk, but it should consist of a number 
of conic sections placed one upon the top of the other. 
A low centre of gravity is obtained and the strength is 
greater at the part where it is most needed to meet the 
force of the waves— the base. As regards the question of 
weight, the principle followed is to make the structure as 
heavy as possible, so that its own inertia may make it 
impossible for it to be moved. And lastly, as we have 
seen in studying the lines of construction followed by 
Smeaton with the Eddystone lighthouse, the building 
should be as far as possible a monolith. Stone should be 
jointed to stone, and the whole firmly jointed to the rock, 
so that each part of the building is an integral and immov- 
able part of the whole. 

To no class of engineer do we owe a greater debt of 
gratitude than we do to the lighthouse engineer. He has 
to do his work in conditions of serious danger and acute 
discomfort, and his chief source of satisfaction in the 
accomphshment of the good work he does must be in the 
feeling that, as a result of his efforts, the safety of Hfe 
at sea has been enormously increased. 



CHAPTER XX 

RAILWAYS — ^AERIAL RAILWAYS — SWINGING RAILWAYS AND 

MONO-RAILS 

In the year 1819, at a time when the celebrated Duke of 
Bridgewater had covered England with a network of 
canals, a friend is said to have remarked to him : " You 
must be making handsomely out of your canals ? " " Oh, 
yes," was the Duke's reply, " they will probably last my 
time, but I don't like the look of these trainroads ; there's 
mischief in them ! " 

It is, when you come to think of it, extraordinary that 
great ideas, though they have seemed to float about vaguely 
at various periods in the world's history, are seized upon 
and crystallised in the brain of one or two individuals, 
who give them the driving force necessary to transfer 
them from the realm of fancy into the domain of fact. It 
needed a Homer to fix the floating poetry that the world 
has wondered at in the Iliad and Odyssey ; Athens had 
to wait for a Solon to crystallise her laws, just as Sparta 
had to wait for a Lycurgus ; the Stuarts had stirred up the 
ideas of revolution in men's minds for many years, but 
England waited for a Hampden and a Cromwell to kindle 
the tinder of revolt ; the world had long dreamed of an 
outlet to the West, but the centuries dragged on their 
weary course till the enterprise of Columbus shot out and 
discovered America. Instances could be multiplied inde- 

302 



Railways 303 

finitely, but I think it is not generally known that we owe 
the idea of the locomotive engine as a means of passenger 
transport to Thomas Gray, who proved himself on this 
subject to be the necessary man of the one idea. 

Gray, in 1819, was travelling in the North of England 
and found himself watching a great train of coal wagons 
being pushed along a tramroad that connected one of the 
collieries of the district with the wharf at which the coals 
were delivered. " Why," he suddenly asked the engineer 
in charge, " are not these tramlines laid down all over 
England, so as to supersede our common roads, and steam- 
engines employed to convey goods and passengers along 
them so as to supersede horse-power ? " The engineer 
smiled at his question : " Just you propose that to the 
nation, sir, and see what you'll get by it. Why, sir, you'd 
be worried to death for your pains ! " But the idea had 
captured Gray. He gave his friends no peace, he attacked 
the public with letters and circulars and pamphlets, and at 
last he wrote a book which was published in 1820, with the 
lengthy title : " Observations on a General Iron Railway, 
or Land Steam Conveyance, to supersede the necessity of 
horses in all pubUc vehicles, showing its past superiority 
in every respect over all the present pitiful methods of 
conveyance by turnpike roads, canals and coasting traders, 
containing every information relative to railroads and 
locomotive engines, by Thomas Gray." 

The book attracted attention, and within four or five 
years Gray's idea had captured the public, and people were 
asking what had been the good of wTiting a big book to 
explain what any fool had known all along. It is a 
natural attitude of mind, and when discoveries are an- 



304 All About Engineering 

nounced to-day, you will find that it is quite a common 
criticism for eminent people to go even farther and to say, 
" There's nothing in it, and, anyway, if there were any- 
thing in it, I discovered it myself long ago." 

In giving this credit to Gray, it is only fair to note that 
though it was he who put the idea before the public, it 
was George Stephenson who had originated it by his con- 
struction of the first locomotive engine, which ran its 
first trial in 1814. 

In this book we are concerned with the present rather 
than with the historical side of engineering, and as railways 
have formed the subject-matter of a special volume of 
this series, I shall mention only a few of the more curious 
developments of railway engineering, leaving you to refer 
back to Mr. Hartnell's book for an account of railway 
engineering as a whole, and of the great lines such as the 
Trans-Continental Railway of Australia, the Cape-to-Cairo 
Railway in Africa, or the vast Trans-Siberian Railway 
that has been constructed by Russia. 

The aerial railway is, I suppose, the most extraordinary 
modification of transport that has as yet been made. It 
has forced its way to all parts of the world, and we find 
it carrying sugar-cane in Jamaica, iron-ore in Bilbao, heavy 
timber in the Apennines, and passengers in Cape Town. 
Naturally enough, it assumes various forms. In some it 
consists of an endless rope supported on spans, continually 
on the move, and carrying baskets or cars slung on to it. 
In others, the wires themselves are stationary, and the 
cars are dragged along the wires as if they were rails by 
means of a rope ; and, lastly, of course, the motive power 
may be gravity alone, as at Gibraltar, where the object 



Railways 305 

of the aerial railway is to transport material from the 
higher to the lower level. It is at Bilbao that this type of 
railway reaches its greatest development. The main route 
has 9 miles of wire running side by side, and in the district 
altogether there is as much as 30 miles of it, about 120,000 
tons of iron ore being thereby carried with it annually. 
At Cape Town it has been adapted both for goods and 
passengers. The wires were originally designed to carry 
materials to the waterworks on the Table Mountain, a dis- 
tance of 5,280 feet, with a rise of 2,168 feet. At places the 
wire becomes almost perpendicular, and the first of the long 
spans, which is as much as 1,470 feet, lifts the level from 
698 feet to 1,480 feet. 

Are these aerial railways dangerous ? I don't think that 
charge could fairly be brought against them when you 
consider the huge strain that properly-made wire ropes 
will support. Here is an example taken, it is true, from 
tramcar work, which, after all, is similar. In Melbourne the 
cable is 19,500 feet long, 3f inches in circumPerence, and 
weighs 20 tons to the piece. After being 94 weeks and 
3 days in use, during which period it had run 120,108 
miles, it was put on to a lighter line, where it increased 
its total mileage to 148,726 miles. By this time it was 
appreciably lighter, but had lost little of its toughness 
or strength. A similar example of the toughness of wire 
rope can be taken from one of the aerial railways, where 
a single cable in a period of two years had carried 165,000 
tons. At the outset it had a breaking strain of 29^^ tons, 
but when it was taken off on the ground that it had had 
sufacient wear, its breaking strain was found to be as 
much as 27I tons. 



u 



3o6 All About Engineering 

The railway that is slung on rails is another type 
having its own special advantages. It is really a German 
idea, and they speak of it as the Schwebebahn, or swinging 
railway. The projector of the type was a Mr. Langer, of 
Cologne, who died before seeing his idea take material 
shape. A good example of it is to be found in the railway 
that runs from Vohwinkel through Elberfeld to Bannen. 
As might be expected, the motive power for this peculiar 
type is electricity. The rails — there are two of them, to 
allow carriages or trains to travel in either direction — are 
supported on A-shaped trestles that lift them well above 
the level of the ground. The great advantages of the sus- 
pended railway are its cheapness — it only costs a few 
thousand pounds a mile to build — and the handiness with 
which it can be made to cross viaducts, crowded streets, 
difficult curves and rugged hill-sides. The ordinary practice 
is to run isolated carriages along the lines, or small trains 
of two or three carriages, taking them, if necessary, all 
the length of a river bed in order to save the cost of 
valuable ground. 

You have read by now in the chapter on the Gyrostat 
a reference to the remarkable achievements of Mr. Louis 
Brennan with his mono-rail, Mr. Brennan's, however, is not 
the only scheme for a mono-rail railway, and the proposals 
of Mr. F. B. Behr, which have got beyond the experimental 
stage, are so remarkable as to deserve at least a mention 
in this volume. Curiously enough, he got his first idea 
from the ingenuity of a French engineer, who found him- 
self face to face in Algeria with the difficulty that his lines 
were always being submerged by sand storms that swept 
over the plains. Watching a caravan of camels one day. 




Phot..: <;. Il'thr/i, kikhberg- 

A RACK RAILWAY ON MOUNT PILATUS 



Railways 307 

the idea struck him that a line might be constructed where 
the principle of the balanced pannier might successfully be 
incorporated. The engineer lost no time in putting his 
idea to the trial, balancing his loads on an elevated rail, 
and his plans proved a conspicuous success. Mr. Behr, 
hearing of the scheme, at once decided to adopt it for 
passenger traffic, and he succeeded in constructing a satis- 
factory passenger line in Ireland, where the entire train 
balances on a single rail with two supporting rails on either 
side, being perched on its rail as securely as the pannier 
bags are slung across the backbone of a mule. Mr. 
Behr has since proved that his railway is something 
much more than a toy, for he succeeded at the Brussels 
Exhibition in constructing a 3 mile long track, on which his 
train travelled at the astonishing speed of 90 miles an 
hour. 

Ninety miles an hour, howevtr, is far from being a 
record speed, for in the special electric trains used in the 
speed tests for the Society for the Study of Electric Express 
Railways of Berlin, the astonishing speed of 118 miles an 
hour was attained on the experimental line between Marien- 
feld and Zossen. During the last few years, amazing speeds 
have been achieved, and still more astounding speeds have 
been projected. It is nothing astonishing, for instance, to 
read of the promotion of railway lines on which the speed 
of 200 miles an hour is to be reached. 

Crude speeds are apt to convey no very definite idea 
to the imagination, and to indicate to you what these 
speeds mean, I am including here a table showing their 
value comparatively. The speed of a railway train travel- 
ling at 118 miles an hour can be put in the form that a mile 



3o8 



All About Engineering 



Min. 


Sec. 


I 


33i 


I 


38 


2 


2i 


3 





3 


49 


4 


I2| 


6 


23 


25 


I3f 



would be covered in about 30 1 seconds, and other record 
speeds are : 

Racehorse 
CycHst 

Trotting horse 
Skating . . 
Eight oar 
Running 
Walking . . 
Swimming 

If we look back at the development of the railways, we 
have, I think, every reason to look forward in the near 
future to a considerable increase in our prevailing rates 
of speed. The steam engine, one has to remember, is more 
or less limited, just as the fiat bed printing press is limited 
because its backward and forward movement if unduly 
speeded up is liable to shake the machine to pieces ; but 
it is difficult to indicate a limit of speed for electrically- 
driven rotary movements. Electricity seems destined alto- 
gether to replace steam as a motor power for the railway 
train. It may be that in the time to come man wiU secure 
such a mastery over the air that for great speeds he will 
make use of aerial transport, but at present all the indica- 
tions point rather to aerial transport supplementing rather 
than replacing the railroad, just as the railroad has supple- 
mented rather than replaced water transport. Of this latter 
truth we have a striking example in the Manchester Ship 
Canal, an enterprise that by bringing Manchester to the 
sea has saved that city from being starved out by its 
rival Liverpool. 



Railways 309 

In the future the railway engineer will, I am convinced, 
never cease to hold a prominent place. In the past, he has 
been one of the factors making most prominently for the 
civilisation of the world, and when one considers the vast 
tracts of the world that still require to be linked up and 
brought into close touch with one another, it is impossible 
to doubt that the future lying before the railway engineer 
wiU prove even more glorious and distinguished than 
has been his past. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE WORK OF A CONTRACTOR — CONSTRUCTION IN AFRICA, 
LONDON, CHILI, RUSSIA, AND NEW BRUNSWICK 

In the course of this book we have considered various 
special engineering works, but I think it might also interest 
you to hear some account of the work undertaken and in 
progress at one and the same time by an individual firm. 
For the purpose I have selected Messrs. Griffiths and Com- 
pany, of Griffiths House, London Wall, partly, I must 
admit, because of the magnitude of the work that they are 
carrying through, but more especially because the head 
of the firm, Mr. Norton Griffiths, is a man who stands out 
pre-eminently for the importance of maintaining intact the 
great Empire that we control, and of furthering its interests 
by every means within his power. It is only recently that 
Mr. Griffiths' firm issued an official publication which gave 
full details of the work they were engaged on in various 
parts of the world. They pointed out then that among 
the more important works recently carried out by them, 
and in course of construction, were : the Benguella and 
Katanga Railway in Portuguese West Africa (£2,500,000), 
the Battersea to Deptford Sewer (£481,000), the Chili 
Longitudinal Railway (£4,026,000), the Baku Waterworks 
(£1,026,000), and the Harbour Works, St. John, New 
Brunswick. About each of these works an epic could be 
written, for in each case the operations have been of excep- 

310 



The Work of a Contractor 311 

tional difficulty, and have been carried through with an 
energy and enterprise that mocks at the obstacles that 
Nature has strewn in the path. 

To most of us the Benguella Railway is but a name 
and nothing more, but to the trader in South Africa it 
stands for a great deal more, for not only does it mean 
the running of a railway line from the West Coast of Africa 
eastwards into the interior, but it brings the West Coast 
directly into touch with the Cape-to-Cairo Railway, renders 
accessible the rich copper deposits round about Katanga, in 
Central Africa, and aims at bringing Pretoria and the 
Rand Gold Mines a few days' journey closer to London. 
The contractors have had a stupendous job to undertake. 
In Lobito Bay they have already built a permanent wharf 
with 8-feet cylinders filled with concrete and reinforced 
concrete and decking, and a branch line has had to be 
constructed to link up the main railway with the Cape-to- 
Cairo Railway. That the line is 800 miles long is, perhaps, 
hardly a matter for comment, but it has to be remembered 
that much of the material for it has had to be brought 
direct from England, that a 250-feet span bridge has had 
to be thrown across one river, while over another a bridge 
of nine spans, each of over 35 feet, has had to be thrown. 
When the line had only been carried 32 miles from the 
coast, it passed through a rocky gorge, where for i| miles 
it has a gradient of i in 16, and has to be worked on the 
rack system, and so it steadily rises until it gets up to the 
top of a lofty plateau. The country that it taps is essentially 
a white man's land, giving excellent farming facilities and 
offering at present unique opportunities for the big game 
hunter. Among the many difficulties that the contractor 



312 All About Engineering 

has had to overcome have been the shortage of labour, to 
counter which a large number of Indian natives, trained in 
great Indian construction works, were imported, and the 
absence of water, to meet which special water stations were 
established, and in one instance, at least, a large well had 
to be sunk. The value of the work is perhaps most strik- 
ingly shown by the fact that when the line was only in 
its early stages in the first six months of 1907, it doubled 
the total tonnage of Lobito for the preceding year. 

From the West Coast of Africa the scene changes to the 
heart of London, and the contractors who had been think- 
ing in terms of tropical heat and traffic problems were 
called to turn their attention to a great underground sewer 
from Battersea, south of the river Thames, to Deptford. 
It was to be 9 miles long, to consist of 6 miles of cast-iron 
lined tunnel, passing through water-bearing strata, and of 
3 miles of brick-lined tunnel, passing through clay. The 
cross-section of the tunnel made the building no light 
affair, for at its largest it is 9 feet 10 inches in diameter, 
or only a trifle less than most of the London Tube RailwajJ'S, 
and to SO great a degree of accuracy are the engineers expected 
to work, that while the error of a hundredth part of a 
degree would mean that the two ends of the tunnel, which 
are constructed from opposite sides to meet in the middle, 
were only out of truth by 2 feet, an approximation to 
within an error of a single inch is only looked upon as 
fairly good. In view of the description of tunnel-driving, 
to which I am devoting a special chapter, there is no 
reason for me to say more here than that the problems 
were similar, and that the sewer is destined to form a very 
important link in the drainage scheme of Greater London. 



The Work of a Contractor 313 

Mr. Norton Griffiths also obtained a great work in 
Chili, the construction of the Chili Longitudinal Railway. 
This, indeed, is a gigantic project, with an expenditure of 
over £4,000,000 involved, and a line of nearly 400 miles 
in length to construct. The railway runs north and 
south between Cabildo and Toledo, and is eventually to 
form part of a great pan-American Railway that is to 
run from New York to Valparaiso. Economically, for 
the present, its great value will be to give both to Bolivia 
and Chili an outlet for their agricultural products, and 
thereby to make the country less dependent than in the 
past on the nitrate industry, which hitherto has been the 
great factor in its financial condition. The capital import- 
ance of this can be gathered from the fact that till now 
the exportation of the nitrate products has been, in the 
absence of any impetus to agricultural production, the 
chief source of Chilian wealth. The more important centres 
of civilisation, forming the natural outlet for the consump- 
tion of agricultural products, have lain to the south out of 
communication with the agricultural districts, and from 
their isolation have in times of stress been brought more 
often than once to the verge of starvation. The new line, 
in fact, does the greatest of all economic services, as it 
effectually renders possible the unrestricted distribution of 
wealth. The following short table will give an idea of the 
vast scope of the undertaking 

Length of line . , 

Total length of tunnels 

Length of bridges 

Earth requiring to be moved , 

Weight of rails 

Sleepers to be set 



370 miles 

3 miles 3 furlongs 

2 miles 7 furlongs 

14,000,000 cubic yards 

35,160 tons 

1,000,000 



314 All About Engineering 

As in the case of the railway in West Africa, the 
difficulties of the country through which the line has 
had to be driven added enormously to the complexity of 
the task. 

We next come to the water supply for the town of 
Baku, in Russia. In this case, again, the work is on a huge 
scale, for a water conduit 120 miles long has to be built. 
The sources of the supply are artesian wells in the hills, 
and the pressure is such that the water often rises 15 feet 
above the surface. The original supply is collected into 
a great measuring chamber before following the slope for 
a matter of 100 miles. It has then to dive beneath the 
Ata-chai River and the swampy ground around it, an ob- 
struction that it succeeds in passing by means of a mon- 
ster siphon 42 inches in diameter and no less than 10,000 
metres in length. A little farther on a large pumping 
station is necessary, and then an 810-metre-long tunnel 
takes it through the mountains to a large reservoir, from 
which it is to be distributed to the town. 

The last of the large works with which I have to deal 
is the contract for the construction of the New Harbour 
in Courtenay Bay, St. John, New Brunswick, involving 
an expenditure of some 13,000,000 doUars, and the con- 
struction of the largest dock on the North American 
continent, or indeed in the world, having a length of 
1,150 feet. 

The dock is, however, of only secondary importance to 
the rest of the work, which includes the building of a break- 
water some 6,000 feet in length, the construction of quays 
and yards by reclamation of some 30 acres in extent, 
and the dredging of a channel and basin to a depth of 



The Work of a Contractor 315 

35 feet below low water, necessitating the removal of 
some 12,000,000 cubic yards of material, which is per- 
formed by three monster dredgers of the most modern 
type. This work is expected to occupy five years, and 
is the first contract of magnitude entered into by the 
Dominion Government. 

I am afraid that this outline of the great works that 
have been in course of construction at one and the same 
time by a single firm may, for the moment, strike you 
as somewbat lacking in interest, I have given, how- 
ever, only the bare lines of the undertakings with a view 
to emphasising the amazing complexity of work that the 
great contractor must be ready at once to undertake. 
Just consider what these projects mean in resource to 
Messrs. Griffiths and Co. They are expected to have 
expert knowledge of constructing mountain railways, to be 
familiar with the vastly different conditions obtaining in 
West Africa and in Chili, to be conversant with the labour 
market all over the world, to be bridge builders and tunnel 
drivers, to be thoroughly conversant with the methods of 
driving an underground tunnel through the water-bearing 
strata of the London subsoil, to have at their finger ends 
every detail of hydraulic engineering, and at the same time 
to be experts in the transportation of materials and in 
finance. Naturally this wide knowledge is only obtained 
by the firm being able to draw on a stock of highly trained 
experts, but the credit of it all belongs to the founder of 
the firm, Mr. Norton Grifiiths, who, by his personality, 
his genius and enthusiasm, is able, in addition to his labour 
as a Member of Parliament, to weld all this talent together 
for the achievement of a particular object, and, by his 



3i6 All About Engineering 

skill as an organiser and an engineer, of making it far 
more productive than it ever could be if it stood alone. 

It is a splendid career for a man, this work of the 
contractor. Success in it demands the possession in a high 
degree of all the qualities that go to the making of a great 
leader — courage, imagination, energy, enterprise, resource, 
endurance, enthusiasm, judgment, organising ability, self- 
control, and the personal magnetism that is necessary for 
the management of men. 



CHAPTER XXII 

TUNNELLING — ^THE MONT CENIS TUNNEL, THE SIMPLON 
TUNNEL, THE SEVERN TUNNEL, THE THAMES TUNNEL, 
AND THE EAST RIVER GAS TUNNEL 

Tunnelling seems, on first thoughts, a simple enough 
operation, but it is only necessary for us to look round 
the animal creation to come to a realisation of its diffi- 
culty. Countless of the wild beasts, as one can see from 
the way in which they make their lairs in caves, have 
appreciated the idea of the tunnels affording a refuge from 
danger, but it is only the smallest of them that have found 
tunnel construction possible. The fact is not to be wondered 
at when you get to learn of the extraordinary difficulties 
that man has had to surmount in constructing his great 
tunnels. And yet, the necessity for the tunnel has been 
so great that it goes back to the earliest periods of man's 
history. It is a gruesome idea, but we know it to be true, 
that a Theban King on ascending the throne started at 
once on the excavation of the tunnel that was to lead to 
the sepulchre that was to form his final resting-place. 
Then we read of the tunnel driven under the Euphrates, 
the engineers hitting on the highly practical if elaborate 
plan of diverting the stream of the river, building their 
tunnel on the dry bed, and then returning its waters again 
to their ancient course. The Romans were tunnel builders 
on a mighty scale, but their achievements were bought 

317 



3i8 All About Engineering 

with the price of the blood of their slaves. We must give 
credit to them, however, for their skill and ingenuity, if 
not for their humanity. They hit on the idea of weakening 
the face of a solid rock by heating it, and of taking advan- 
tage of the chemical properties of vinegar to attack it, and 
Pliny tells of how in the excavation of the tunnel for the 
drainage of Lake Fucino 40 shafts and a number of inclined 
galleries were sunk along its length of 3J miles, some of the 
shafts being as much as 400 feet deep. The Middle Ages 
added little to the knowledge of tunnelling gained by 
the Romans beyond the adaptation of gunpowder for the 
purposes of blasting, and the tunnelling of the Middle Ages 
was restricted almost entirely to the construction of under- 
ground escapes for the castles of the barons. The arrival 
of the steam railway was needed to force the attention of 
the engineers at all generally to the work. Accurate survey- 
ing instruments, highly specialised explosives, power-driven 
rock drills, were all pressed into service, and so far the 
culminating achievement of the art has been the inven- 
tion by Sir Isambard Brunei of the shield that makes the 
forcing of a tunnel through soft, water-laden strata a com- 
paratively simple task. The problems of the tunnel-builder 
are so varied, that I can do little more than select a few 
examples to illustrate the methods that the engineers are 
called upon to apply. 

The Mont Cenis Tunnel, from the standpoint of con- 
struction, as being the first of the great Alpine tunnels, is 
the most marvellous in the world. Fifteen years (1857-72) 
went to its building, and as they were cutting through the 
7.9 miles of its length, the engineers found themselves 
forced to invent many of the special appliances that have 




Fhoto : Undc>-ivo,]d <j- U)ider-uiood, .\cw kork 

DRILLING HOLES IN THE SIDE WALL OF A TUNNEL 



Tunnelling 319 

since become a part of the stock-in-trade of the tunnel 
engineers. Thus, it was in the Mont Cenis Tunnel that use 
was first made of power drills with compressed air to drive 
them, of aspirators to suck the foul air from the excava- 
tion, of air compressors, turbines and so forth. 

One of the most difficult tasks in driving these long 
tunnels with the men at work simultaneously from both 
ends is to ensure the two tunnels meeting accurately in 
the centre. Elaborate surveys have to be made, and in 
the construction of the St. Gotthard Tunnel, which is the 
classical example of this type of work, the most accurate 
form of surveying known as triangulation, had to be 
employed. The St. Gotthard Tunnel is 9.25 miles long, 
and two different astronomers were employed to check 
each other's work, getting their centre line by making use 
of different sets of triangles, and by working at different 
times. Every angle was read four times, and for each 
reading special steps were taken to avoid the possibility 
of instrumental error, and the differences in the readings 
obtained were found to be less than the 324,000th of a 
right angle, or, as engineers would describe it, as less than 
a second of arc. From these readings it was expected that 
when the two ends of the tunnel met the deviation from 
the true centre would not be more than 2 inches. As a 
matter of fact, the deviation was as much as 11 inches, 
and though engineers profess to regard this as a large 
error, their discounting of the result is, to my mind, only a 
further proof of the amazing degree of accuracy to which 
we can attain by modem instruments. 

To return to the Mont Cenis Tunnel. Until 1861 the 
excavation was carried on by hand labour. The method 



320 All About Engineering 

adopted was to drill thirteen holes near the centre. Round 
these came a ring of sixteen holes ; then eight holes between 
this and thirteen above formed the third round, while close 
to the floor eight more holes were bored for the fourth 
round, each of them being 3| feet deep. The time 
required for boring the holes was between 6 and 
8 hours. From i| to 2 hours were required for filling 
in the holes with explosives, and from 3 to 5 hours to get 
rid of the blasted rock, so that in 24 hours it was only 
possible to make two blasts at the front of the drift. I am 
giving a diagram of the sections in which the tunnel 
was built. The different portions were completed in the 
order of the numbers. No. i being the portion known as 
the drift. 

The engineers were fortunate in having plenty of water- 
power available, and they were able to make use of a 
natural head of water to drive air into a special reservoir 
at an 8o-feet pressure. 

It win come, probably, as a surprise to you to hear that 
in transferring this water power to the drills as much as 
27 J er cent, was lost by the friction of the water in the 
pipes, etc. ; 23^ per cent, of it went to work the valves of 
the compressors, and on ventilation, and only 49.4 per cent, 
of it v/as available to drive the drills. As you can imagine, 
the work was of so comprehensive a character that the 
most elaborate machinery and machine shops had to be 
erected in connection with it. It was even necessary for 
a gas factory to be built at each end for lighting purposes. 
For ventilation, it was found that the compressed air 
after passing through the drills was so contaminated with 
oil as to be useless for breathing, and a special turbine. 



Tunnelling 321 

worked by a stream of 75 gallons of water a second, with 
a head of 60 feet, had to be installed to drive air to the 
workmen at the rock face. 

It was in connection with the Simplon Tunnel that the 
engineers found it necessary to take special care of the 
health of their workmen, Mr. Prelini has explained how 
great care was taken that the miners and men working in 
the tunnel should not suffer from the sudden change from the 
warm headings to the cold Alpine air outside, and how 
for this purpose a large building, at the time he wrote, was 
in course of erection, where they would be able to take off 
their damp working clothes, have a hot and cold douche, 
put on a warm, dry suit, and obtain refreshments at a 
moderate cost, before returning to their homes. Instead 
of each man having a locker in which to stow his clothes, 
a perfect forest of cords hung down from the wooden ceilings, 
25 feet above floor-level, each cord passing over its own 
pulleys and down the wall to a numbered belaying pin. 
Each cord supported three hooks and a soap dish, which, 
when loaded with their owner's property were hauled up 
to the ceiling out of the way. There were 2,000 of these 
cords spaced i foot 6 inches apart, one to each man. 

Paradoxical as it appears, tunnelhng is comparatively 
easy so long as a passage has to be cut through solid rock, 
and though when one uses the word tunnel one thinks 
most naturally perhaps of the Mont Cenis, the Simplon, the 
St. Gotthard, or the Busk, it is the tunnels that have to 
pass through soft strata or through water and quicksands, 
which give the greatest anxiety to their constructors. 

The difficulty of the tunnel driven through soft ground 
lies in the fact that the excavation has to be supported 



322 All About Engineering 

by struts almost as fast as it is constructed. There is the 
danger that the material may cave in or slide, and, indeed, 
even when the masonry is in place, that the pressure may 
be such as to crush the keystone of the arch on which 
the tunnel depends. As I am fast outrunning the space 
available for this chapter, I am including a page of diagrams 
that must speak for themselves, and show some of the 
types of tunnel-making associated with the different nations. 
Passing over these types of construction, each of which 
has its own special advantages and drawbacks, we will 
come to a few instances of the most difficult types of 
tunnelling of all, submarine tunnelling. 

In submarine tunnelling it is usually the unexpected 
that happens, and in the Severn Tunnel the engineers 
were confronted again and again with the unexpected. 
The tunnel itself is 4 miles 642 yards long, and to expedite 
the work, and to facilitate pumping, several shafts had 
to be sunk. What the engineers did not allow for, however, 
was that their pumps would work badly, that a huge spring 
should be tapped while the works were in progress, that 
there should be a determined strike and a disastrous fire. 
To undertake the work at all showed courage on behalf 
of the engineers, for the railway company concerned had 
already spent seven years at it, and their workings were 
flooded before they decided to give out the contract. The 
contract was let by the engineer, Sir John Hawkshaw, to 
Mr. Thomas A. Walker, and I am fortunate in having by 
me the account he gave of the work. It is a story of inces- 
sant difficulties, of the pumps breaking at critical moments, 
of the fruitless heroism of the divers, of the misfortune 
that the irruption of a great spring formed, and of a foolish 



r 


1 


r\ 


i ^ 


2 


5 \ 


5 


4 


5 




Sequence of excavations in the 
Belgian method 



4) 3 4 

z z 

— 5 — 

1 1 



5 4 5 

5 | |~5 

2_ 6 _2 

1 1 



Sequence of excavations in the 
German method 




Sequence of excava- 
tions in the English 
method 





Sequence of excava- 
tions in the Italian 
method 



Construction of strutting 
English method 




Italian method : 
Strutting for lower part 



/'Mi 



^^^M. 



% \ 



3-' ! I 



Preliminary drainage 

galleries, quicksand 

method 



A 


z 


*\ 


IX 


5 


'/■] 


\r 


1 


l/ 


s \ 




/8 



\J Lx 

6 16 



Sequence of excavations in the 
Austrian method 




^'t;^ 


1 


\W 








'•fef 




w 


■^ 





F- 


''-^ 


»7rr/.v 


%-'- - 



Construction of roof strutting, 
quicksand method 



DIFFERENT METHODS OF TUNNELLING 

With permission of the author from ^' Tunneliing," by Charles Prelini, C.E.; New 
Vork, D, Van Nostrand Coinpany ; London, Crosby Locliwood is' Son 



Tunnelling 323 

panic, which demonstrates clearly enough the way in 
which work such as this gets upon the nerves of the men 
engaged upon it. 

The workings were flooded, and with the pumps going 
badly it was found impossible adequately to control the 
waters. The trouble lay in the fact that a valve in one 
of the doors had been left open, and that the door was 
1,000 feet away from the bottom of the shaft. The diver, 
Lambert — I have often wondered whether he was related 
to the man of the same name whom I saw working on the 
wreck of the Oceanic — ^had made several plucky attempts 
to reach this door, and screw the valve home, and after 
his failure to reach the door on the 3rd November the 
engineers telegraphed for Fleuss to bring his patent dress 
and try if he could do the work. On the 4th he arrived, 
full of confidence in the success of his attempt. All the 
instructions which could be given to him were given, and 
on the 5th Lambert and he descended into the head- 
ing ; Lambert with the ordinary dress and the air-hose 
to start Fleuss fairly up the heading, and to encourage 
him. After three attempts on the 5th November, it 
became evident that Fleuss had not sufficient practice as 
a diver or confidence in himself to go far up the heading ; 
with some difficulty, Lambert was persuaded to put on 
Fleuss's dress, and try how he could work in it. After 
spending half-an-hour under water in this dress, Lambert 
returned fully satisfied, and undertook with a little more 
practice to make another attempt to get to the door, and 
he started to do so on the 8th. Knowing the obstacles he 
would have to meet on his way, it was not without con- 
siderable anxiety that the engineer and his men watched 



324 All About Engineering 

Lambert start, for he had to climb over the skips, and 
other things in total darkness, and he was many times 
cautioned to be careful that the knapsack on which he 
depended for air should not strike the roof of the heading 
or any of the timbers, and fracture the small copper pipe 
which led air from his knapsack to his helmet. On the 
afternoon of the 8th Lambert succeeded in reaching the 
door. He pulled up one of the rails, and removed it, but 
having then been absent some time, and feeling, no doubt, 
nervous from the novelty of the experiment he was making, 
he returned again to the shaft without shutting the door. 
Still full of confidence, he started again on the loth, and 
reached the door again in safety, went through, and let 
down the flap-valve, pulled up the other rail, and closed 
the door. He then screwed round the rod of the sluice- 
valve the number of turns he had been told it would take 
to shut it, and returned safely and in triumph to the shaft. 
Anxiously the engineers watched the floats which told 
them the level of the water, and their disappointment and 
annoyance was great when they found that it still con- 
tinued to go down at the rate of only about 3 inches an 
hour. 

Fresh pumps had to be ordered, and when at last the 
water had been got under control and a man could walk 
along the tunnel, the foreman of the Cornish pumps walked 
up the heading to the door, which the diver, Lambert, 
had shut, and then he found the cause of the disappoint- 
ment felt at not gaining upon the water as soon as Lambert 
had succeeded in shutting the door. The rails were pro- 
perly pulled up and removed, and the door was properly 
closed. The flap valve on the pipe on the south side of 



Tunnelling 325 

the door was also shut, but the sluice valve on the other 
side had a left-handed screw, and the valve must have 
been closed when Lambert reached it ; and when he had 
given it the right number of turns to close the valve, instead 
of closing it, he had opened it to its full width. 

As I have said above, the workings had been flooded 
by the irruption of a great spring when Mr. Walker took 
them over, and in 1883, when satisfactory progress had been 
made, this spring was one incessant source of difficulty and 
danger. The most terrifying experience of all, however, 
was when, as a result of a great tidal wave, the sea itself 
poured into the mouth of the tunnel, and imprisoned the 
workers, who, luckily, were able to make a hurried escape 
into the upper parts of the workings. A boat was sent 
to the men's rescue, but soon found its progress blocked 
by a heavy timber lying across its path, and a saw had to 
be fetched. This fell into the water, and the men had to 
wait anxiously until another was got, when eventually 
they were all rescued none the worse for their adventure. 

As regards the panic, when the men thought the river 
had broken in upon them, though, as a matter of fact, the 
water seen was merely due to a drain being blocked, 
Mr. Walker writes : " One of them was seized with panic, 
and he called out : ' Escape for your lives, boys ! The 
river's in ! ' And the men had taken the alarm at once. 
As they ran towards the shaft, the men in the other break- 
ups joined in the panic, and at last the whole stream of 
men — 300 or 400 in number — ran for their lives to the 
winding shaft at Sudbrook. When passing through lengths 
of finished tunnel, they spread out in a disorderly crowd, 
running perhaps 20 feet wide ; then they would come to a 



326 All About Engineering 

short length between two break-ups, where there was 
only a 7-foot heading. Here they threw each other down, 
trampled upon each other, shouting and screaming ; and 
then, to add to the disorder, the ponies in the various 
break-ups took the alarm and galloped down in the direc- 
tion of the winding shaft, trampling on the prostrate bodies 
of the men." 

It was with these and many other similar difficulties 
to contend against that the Severn Tunnel, after fourteen 
years spent in its construction, was opened to the public 
on December ist, 1886. 

Sir Isambard Brunei was the first engineer successfully 
to drive a tunnel beneath the surface of the Thames, and 
he succeeded in his object by the invention of the famous 
shield, which has since then been used in the construction 
of hundreds of tunnels throughout the world. The story 
goes that he got the idea of employing a shield to aid in 
the construction of tunnels through soft ground by watch- 
ing ship-worms at work. Noticing that this animal had 
a head provided with a boring apparatus, and that its 
body threw off a secretion which made it impervious to 
water, he worked on a method by which its practice could 
be imitated, and at last, in 1818, he devised and patented 
the shield. Brunei's invention was a double one. In the 
first case, there was the iron cylinder, with an augur-like 
cutter attached to it in front, which was to turn and cut 
away the material in front of the cylinder, and so enable 
it to advance, the tunnel behind being Hned continuously 
with iron-plating and masonry. This really contained the 
inventor's idea, but the machine that was used in the 
Thames Tunnel, and that has been the prototype of countless 



Tunnelling 327 

other machines, consisted really of a group of separate 
cells which could be advanced one or more at a time or all 
together. It was decided that the sides of the cells should 
have friction rollers, and that the preferable motive-power 
for advancing the cells was hydraulic jacks. Brunei was 
selected as engineer for the first Thames Tunnel — a previous 
company had attempted the task and failed — and by 
means of his shield the task was successfully achieved, 
though the river twice broke in from above, and the inrush 
had to be checked by throwing clay bags from above into 
the holes as they developed, covering them with tarpaulin, 
and discharging a load of gravel on the top. The work 
was able to progress at the rate of 2 feet every 24 hours, 
and was completed in 1843, 20 years after the job was 
commenced. 

If a list were published of remarkable tunnels, the 
East River Gas Tunnel, running from Long Island City to 
New York, would come high up in the list. As an engineer- 
ing feat its construction is notable, because of the success 
with which a shield was driven from hard into soft strata, 
and then again emerged successfully into hard rock. From 
the human standpoint, it is an amazing feat of endurance, 
for there would have been plenty of excuse for the engineers 
if on any one of several occasions they had given up the 
job in despair. 

At the outset the matter seemed simple enough. The 
result of various borings was to indicate that the tunnel 
would pass through solid rock, and the contractors, who 
entered into the contract in June, 18 91, started on their 
work cheerfully enough. After tunnelling had gone on for 
some time, the rock on the New York side began to soften. 



328 All About Engineering 

for a layer of decomposed rock substance was met with 
lying right across their path, ready as soon as it was dis- 
turbed to crumble away into slime under the action of the 
water. 

To avoid this difficulty, the engineers tried to alter 
the direction of the tunnel, but their attempts were of no 
avail ; a heavy bulkhead had hurriedly to be fixed, and 
then the contractors marked time to consider what had 
better be done. Eventually it was agreed to abandon the 
old heading, to sink the shaft 150 feet deeper, and to try 
again, this time making use of compressed air. The 
engineers started with a pressure of 35 pounds, but when 
they reached the treacherous fissure they had already 
touched, the mud and slime and water began to pour in, 
and they had to raise it and have the work carried on under 
a pressure of 45 pounds before they were able to hold it 
in check. At last they got through to solid rock, but not 
unnaturally they began to be anxious as to what would 
happen if the tunnel for the Long Island side struck the 
same decomposed vein. The vein was struck, and while 
the contractors realised the difficulties of the position they 
decided to continue blasting, though, as a precaution, they 
built up a stout bulkhead about 40 yards behind the head 
of the tunnel. When the charges exploded, an inrush of 
many yards of sludgy material took place, the flow being 
only stopped by rock fragments falling in, and closing 
the opening. The contractors now made every effort, but 
found it impossible to control the rush, and the heading 
was eventually abandoned when it had a steady 4-foot 
stream of water flowing through it. 

Meanwhile, a dispute arose between the company and 



Tunnelling 329 

the contractors, and the courts handed the unfinished 
work over to the company. After various delays and 
difficulties, the company decided that the only practicable 
method of completing the tunnel was to introduce a shield 
and to attempt to complete the work with the aid of com- 
pressed air. It required to be specially constructed, so that 
when it might have to be passed from hard to soft material, 
as from soft to hard, it could be erected or taken apart with 
the minimum amount of time and labour. To drive the 
shield, twelve 5-inch hydraulic jacks were used, and these 
were able to give a working pressure of 5,000 pounds per 
square inch, or as much as 700 tons on the whole shield. 
I want now to quote from the account written by Mr. Prelini, 
who was in charge of the compressed-air plant. He writes : 
" The shield was now advanced until it was necessary to 
disturb the bulkhead, the remaining bench ahead of the 
shield being blasted out as the shield progressed. The most 
difficult part of the work was now reached, for at the point 
where the shield entered the soft, black mud on top, there 
still remained about 12 feet of hard rock in the bottom, 
as the dip of this vein was over 40 degrees towards Long 
Island. Blasting had, therefore, to be continued in the 
bottom pockets of the shield after the top had entered 
the much-softened material. As soon as the bulkhead was 
passed, it was with great difficulty that the bottom could 
be kept clear of the black slush from overhead. The material 
had become so softened along the rock face that it was 
almost impossible to confine it, and several rushes of in- 
flowing water occurred, until finally an open connection 
with the river was established, and the tunnel was visited 
by crabs and mussels, together with boulders, old boots 



330 All About Engineering 

and shoes, brick and tinware direct from the river bottom. 
Notwithstanding these adverse circumstances the work was 
still progressing, although in 45 pounds of compressed air, 
which was now escaping through the heading, and causing 
a very violent ebullition on the river surface. The upward 
current of air held in check the downward current of water, 
so that no efforts were made to prevent its escape. On 
December 13th the shield finally cleared the rock, and 
was now fully entered into the soft, black mud. The main 
difficulty was now surmounted, the work progressed more 
rapidly, and the shield soon reached undisturbed material, 
which was found quite dry and hard." 

All these unexpected delays naturally caused great 
anxiety and loss to the company concerned, and in order 
to hold out an inducement to the men to give their best 
work the company offered the foremen a bonus for work 
done, with the result that in one week, ending June 27th, 
a total of 196 feet of tunnel was driven, a pretty creditable 
record when you consider the conditions. On October 15th, 
1894, gas through this tunnel was delivered to New York 
City. 

I have only had space to refer to a few of the famous 
tunnels of the world, and I have by no means exhausted 
the methods adopted for their construction. I must con- 
tent myself, however, with a bare reference to the ingenious 
method that is adopted at times when the ground is so 
soft that even with the shield and compressed air the 
work proves impracticable, whereby the sections of the 
proposed tunnel have been brought to the site in ships, 
lowered over the ship's side, and then guided by the divers 
beneath to be bolted home, and to find a resting place in 



Tunnelling 331 

the sea bottom. In conclusion, I would ask you to remember 
that the tunnel engineer has even more than his fair share 
of anxiety and risk, and that, like the bridge-builder, he 
has continually to be on the alert, with the haunting know- 
ledge that the forces of Nature which he is trying to combat 
may, after all, get the upper hand, and in an hour rob 
him of the fruits of a year's, or of several years', labour. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

SHIPBUILDING — ^THE YARDS — QUESTION OF POWER AND 

SAFETY 

Has it ever struck you, I wonder, what a fortunate thing 
it is for Great Britain that that great ditch, which we call 
the Channel, separates us from the Continent, and that, by 
a curious chance of modern history, we find ourselves the 
centre of the world ? We can spare time, perhaps, just to 
glance over the world's history, the more so as it will be 
possible for me to place it before you in a matter of two 
pages. There can be no doubt, I think, but that in pre- 
historic time the cradle of the world lay in the East, and 
that the Eastern civilisations swept over Europe like a 
flood sweeps over low-lying ground, pouring down the 
valleys which, in this case — ethnically — corresponded to 
Asia Minor, Greece and Italy. Greece and Italy both had 
their period of development, prosperity and ultimate decay, 
until at last, by a curious irony of fate, the centre of the 
world's civilisation moved backwards to the East, to 
establish itself at Constantinople. Consider a map of the 
old world, with Constantinople as the centre. England, 
we see at once, lies in a position of no importance, and 
during the centuries that she lay thus neglected and of 
no consequence, the heptarchy, as we remember reading 
of it, became a single monarchy, and the nation, isolated as 
she was, free to work out her own development, constituted 

332 



Shipbuilding 333 

herself a unit, if one of the least of the units, in the concert 
of the powers. 

Fourteen hundred and fifty-three is the critical date 
of European history, for it was in that year that the 
Mohammedan hordes, sweeping over Western Asia, over- 
whelmed Constantinople in their all-conquering rush, and 
shattered the whole of the Eastern civilisation of Europe. 
Never, I should imagine, has there been such a catastrophe 
in the world's history, the heart of a great civilisation being 
ruthlessly destroyed, while the limbs — the great Italian city 
states, for instance — ^retained their vigour to the full. But 
they found themselves with their outlet to the East gone 
from them, as it seemed, for ever, and were forced to look to 
the West for fresh opportunities. The discovery of America 
is the logical outcome of the fall of Constantinople. Now, 
let us take a map of the world — the Na\^ League map 
would suit us the best — and see the astonishing change 
that the fall of Constantinople and the discovery of America 
has made in our fortunes. Before, as we remember, England 
lay out in the cold on the circumference of the world ; but 
now, with America known to Europe, England becomes 
the centre of the globe, the port of call between the old 
world and the new, with the chance of a limitless develop- 
ment thrown to her by Nature. 

This is no fanciful picture that I am putting before 
you. It was, as you know, at the close of the fifteenth 
century that America was discovered, and the sixteenth 
saw the period of our great merchant adventurers when, 
under Queen Elizabeth, England aspired to and won the 
position of mistress of the seas. 

If you have had patience to follow me so far, you will 



334 All About Engineering 

see now why it is that England — I use England and include 
Scotland, and with Messrs. Harland and Wolff at Belfast, 
Ireland as well — was forced to come to the front as a great 
shipbuilding power. The whole subject of ships has been 
treated already in this series, and as I want to avoid re- 
peating what you have probably already read, I shall 
only deal in the shortest possible way with the actual 
work of construction, and then try and suggest to you a 
few of the developments that seem probable in the future. 
What a marvellous place a shipbuilding yard is, with 
its monster cranes, some of them working as cantilevers, 
others as gantry cranes, all able to deposit their burdens 
with precision in the exact place that the workmen down 
below require it ! It is a far cry indeed from the quiet of 
the architect's office, where every feature of the ship has 
been designed in its minutest detail, to the noise and 
clangour of the yards, where the ideas of the architect are 
materialising in solid steel. Man has to fashion his work 
in a vastly different way from Nature. First, he lays down 
the keelson, or the backbone of the ship, on the keel blocks. 
Out from it spring the naked ribs, then the transverse 
pieces to give it strength, and on the skeleton thus laid 
down must be moulded and riveted the plates that we 
can look on as the flesh of the completed liner or battle- 
ship. The shipbuilding yard of to-day is a very different 
place from the shipbuilding yard of a century since. 
Can you believe, can you realise, that we have only 
had steamships for a hundred years, and that we 
had had steam quite a long while before we thought 
of building vessels of steel ? In less than a hundred 
years all this vast development has taken place. 



Shipbuilding 335 

Every device of the steel trade is pressed into service 
by the shipbuilder. We can stand and watch the plates 
of the liner come red-hot from the furnace, and see them 
crushed and beaten into shape. It is long since it has been 
necessary to drive the rivets by hand. There are special 
pneumatic tools to force them home through the rivet 
holes that the punching machine has made at the rate of 
fifty a minute. If a part of the complex whole which goes 
to make the ship does not exactly fit, there are machines to 
seize it as it comes glowing from the furnace to pass it on 
to other machines that will eat out the piece that has been 
supplied by the makers in excess. On all portions of the 
ship men of all conceivable trades are at work at one and 
the same time, and an impressive sight it is to stand 
amidst the forest of scaffolding seeing the ship steadily 
take shape as one watches her progress. 

As you have learnt from "' All About Ships," though, 
the mechanical skiU of the shipyard is, perhaps, not the 
most wonderful part about shipbuilding after all. What 
of the brain of the man who can visualise the complete 
vessel before the first portion of her keel has been laid, 
who can plan out everything down to the smallest bolt, 
calculating exactly what strain each portion of the ship 
wiU have to bear ; or of those who take the small size 
drawings of the designer and, using the floor of a room as 
their blackboard, chalk out in full scale drawings all the 
girders and plates and rivets that the vessel will eventually 
incorporate ? In the modern building yard, it is a costly 
matter if a mistake is made ; if the material ordered is 
too large, it means time and money to cut it down to shape, 
and waste, too, for the parts cut off have merely their value 



336 All About Engineering 

in scrap metal. And if any of the parts prove too small, the 
matter is more serious still, for the absence of a part may 
easily mean a delay that postpones the completion of the 
whole ship. 

A vast quantity of work requires to be done even when 
a vessel has been successfully launched from the slips. As 
such, she is a mere shell, and has to have her engines, her 
boilers and her maze of different fittings brought together 
before she can go and take her trials. An anxious job the 
trials are for the builders and the designer. Suppose a 
mistake has been made, just imagine, as Jules Verne did 
in the story of the man who was going to shift the axis 
of the earth, that a nought has been dropped in the course 
of the calculations, and that the new ship fails to make 
good according to her contract. This is — to the credit of 
our builders and designers be it said — a thing that very 
seldom happens, which is remarkable enough when you 
bear in mind that the power required to drive a vessel a 
certain speed varies almost as the square of that speed. In 
other words, to put the matter in the terms of horse-power, 
we can say that 400 horses can pull a vessel at a speed of 
20 knots ; it would require 441 horses to go 21 knots, 
484 horses to go 22 knots, 529 horses to go 23 knots, and 
so forth. Consequently, when you are dealing with high- 
speed vessels, as you can imagine, it will require a vast 
increase of power to get out of them an additional knot 
of speed that may have been dropped by the builders or 
designers. 

The progress of shipbuilding has been stupendous 
indeed. Each year sees the record of the previous year 
surpassed, and as the illustration I am printing shows 



Shipbuilding 337 

you, we have seen in 191 3 the launching of an immense 
vessel, the Cunard steamer Aquitania. Still larger is the 
German ship Imperator. In these you have something to 
marvel at. Look how they dwarf the grand conception 
of Brunei and his Great Eastern, and are achieving a success 
where Brunei's mightiest effort spelt unhappy failure. 

The old philosopher in the Book of Proverbs wrote : 
" There be three things which are too wonderful for me ; 
yea, four which I know not : the way of an eagle in the air ; 
the way of a serpent upon a rock ; the way of a ship in 
the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid." 
There is much, I think, for us still to learn in the " way of 
a ship in the midst of the sea," but we can, I think, 
already look forward to a few of the developments that 
the future has in store for us. 

Steam as the motive power for ships is doomed, we 
may be confident, and it will be for the builders in the 
near future so to modify their ships that oil may be used 
in place of coal as fuel. I have made rather a point in 
this book of leaving machinery as much as possible on one 
side, so as to concentrate your attention on the broader 
aspects of engineering; but as the Diesel engine seems to 
me destined to play so prominent a part in the shipbuilding 
of the future, I think it may be well for us to consider the 
different powers of propulsion for the use of which the 
builder may be called upon to design his vessels. We will 
pass over the old days of the galley, where the vessel was 
driven along by banks of oars, and we will only mention 
sail to suggest that the day may not be so far distant after 
all when we shall see a return to sail for several classes of 
ships with other power as an auxiliary. To-day the pre- 
w 



338 All About Engineering 

eminence rests with steam, whether it is used to drive the 
great reciprocating engines with their heavy rods moving 
to and fro, or to drive turbines in a steady rhythmical 
motion in which the speed of the engines gives no special 
strain to the ship. The steam may be raised either from 
coal or oil, and until recently it was thought that the great 
advance would be the superseding of coal as a fuel by oil 
as a fuel. Then came the idea of what has wrongly been 
called the internal combustion engine, that should more 
rightly be described as the internal explosion engine, for 
by a triumph of engineering skill the problem of using an 
explosive to drive an engine has been solved, a problem 
that the engineers of the old days tried but failed to solve 
with gunpowder. As most of you know, the ordinary motor- 
car engines work by virtue of the fact that a mixture of 
petrol and air is brought and compressed in the cylinder, 
and then definitely exploded so as to drive the piston 
forward on its working stroke. We will pass over the 
idea of utilising electricity, and even gas, for as yet these 
seem to have no future before them for large vessels, 
and come to the last type of all, the type that I think 
we shall find will oust all others from the field, I mean 
the Diesel engine. Let us watch it at its work. The piston 
moves down about ninety per cent, of its working stroke 
and then two valves open, an exhaust valve and an inlet 
valve. The inlet valve admits a rush of compressed air 
which both scavenges the cylinder, driving out the exhaust 
gases, and supplies fresh air. Then the exhaust valve closes, 
and the piston returning compresses the air so that it is 
ready for the injection of oil at the top of the stroke. The 
extraordinary efficiency of this system is shown by the 



Shipbuilding 339 

fact that when a Diesel engine and a steam turbine were 
tried side by side at the Turin Exhibition, the two engines 
did the same amount of work, but the turbine consumed 
two and a half times the amount of fuel. The engine has 
already been tried at sea and proved satisfactory, and there 
seems no doubt but that the shipbuilder of the future 
will design vessels for these engines, and reap for the owners 
the advantages of increased cargo space, lessened cost of 
fuel, and a reduced wages bill. 

I have referred already to the increased size of sea- 
going vessels, and to the probable development we may 
expect to see in their means of propulsion, and the next 
step, I imagine, will be to ensure that all boats of any 
reasonable size are equipped with a system of wireless 
telegraphy. It seems only yesterday that Mr. Marconi 
astonished the non-scientific world, and received the con- 
gratulations of men of science for having solved the problem 
of transmitting Hertzian waves through the ether of space, 
and we have seen now several occasions on which disasters 
at sea have either been minimised, as in the awful tragedy 
of the Titanic, or else altogether avoided. Wireless tele- 
graphy requires to be further cheapened and improved, and 
the time will come when no vessel of considerable size will 
dream of putting to sea without a wireless installation on 
board. The chronometer will, to a large extent, though not 
entirely, be superseded, for the ships aU over the ocean 
will receive their correct Greenwich time as often as is 
thought necessary direct from the Observatory, and in 
this way will have an apparatus more reliable than the 
chronometer, however skilfully it may have been con- 
structed. 



340 All About Engineering 

But we shall live to see still more elaborate precautions 
taken to ensure the safety of vessels at sea. Already many 
vessels carry an under-water telephone, whereby they 
can pick up the sound signals of lighthouses and light 
vessels in time of fog, and so navigate the seas with 
greater safety, being able by telephones placed on either 
side of the vessel to determine exactly the origin of the 
sounds they pick up. 

When the Titanic went down with her heavy list of 
dead there were many proposals put forward for still 
further increasing the safety of ships and their passengers, 
and it may well be that one or other of the proposals then 
made will be incorporated by the shipbuilders. In the 
chapter on m.arine salvage we saw that one such idea was 
to strengthen the decks, and more especially the hatches 
of the vessels, so that if the ship received such a blow as 
the Titanic received, she should be able to remain afloat 
by having her weight carried on the deck above that where 
the damage has been done. Only recently I heard a 
striking instance of how conspicuously this is not the 
practice at present. One of the large vessels trading with 
the West Coast of Africa, after a splendid passage from the 
coast, met with bad weather after leaving the Bay. Her 
cargo shifted under the stress of the storms, and some of 
the barrels of palm oil that she was carrying broke through 
the hatches, and fell from deck to deck, being shattered 
in their fall. The loss of the oil was a trifling matter com- 
paratively, and I only quote the incident to show you 
clearly that at present the builders, rightly or wrongly — 
and there is much to be said on both sides — do not con- 
sider it advisable so to strengthen their vessels that they 



Shipbuilding 341 

should be able to bear a heavy pressure on their hatches 
and decks. 

Two suggestions were made as to the means that might 
be taken by ships to determine the near presence of icebergs 
by night. One of them I shall only mention, because I 
think the conditions at sea are such as to make it valueless. 
The idea of the inventor, who had good evidence of a sort 
to go on, was that the presence of a berg so lowers the 
temperature of the surrounding water that a sufficiently 
delicate thermometer would indicate the entrance of a 
ship into the danger zone. The other idea, put forward 
by the great inventor, Sir Hiram Maxim, is so ingenious 
that it seems at least to be worth a trial. Sir Hiram Maxim 
starts a description of his apparatus with an account of 
a not very well-known experiment in natural history. If 
a wild bird is set free in a room, it usually makes straight 
for the glass window, and being unable to see the glass, 
it dashes against it with such violence as to break its neck. 
A bat, however, behaves very differently. Like the bird, 
it is unable to see the glass, and starts flying towards it 
to escape, but when it is a short distance off it stops in 
its flight, realising, by what seems to be a sixth sense, 
that the transparent window is, after all, an obstacle in 
its path. It is only necessary to watch the bat attempting 
to escape to realise that the animal is puzzled by the 
different messages sent to its brain by the two sets of 
senses, for it keeps hovering near the glass and directing 
its flight towards it only to stop again and again as its 
" sixth sense " gives it a warning. The explanation of the 
bat's " sixth sense " is that it has a special organ enabling 
it to detect the echo of the vibrations sent out by the 



342 All About Engineering 

beating of its wings, and when we remember that the bat 
is a nocturnal creature, it is only natural that it should 
place full reliance in a method that enables it to tell when 
it is liable to strike against a solid obstacle that it may 
find in its path. 

With this as a guiding idea, Sir Hiram Maxim claims 
that it will be no very difficult task to equip a ship with 
a similar weapon. The first necessity, obviously, would 
be the apparatus for sending out waves. For this he 
suggests a modified form of siren, driven by steam that 
should give out sound waves of such low frequency as to 
be inaudible to the human ear. Such waves would, of 
course, be reflected like any other waves, and the inventor 
has found that they are amply sufficient to set a large 
diaphragm vibrating. To harness this diaphragm so 
that it should ring a warning bell, and at the same time 
record the number of its vibrations, would be an easy task, 
and the inventor contends, therefore, that there would be 
no difficulty in receiving any such waves that might come 
in the ship's path. Let us conceive now a large vessel 
travelling by night across the sea. Her steam siren would 
continually be sending out these soundless waves to dis- 
sipate themselves over the expanse of ocean. But suppose 
a solid body like an iceberg intervenes. At once some 
of these waves are reflected back according to well-known 
laws. The waves — which would carry a distance of as 
much as twenty miles — would return to the ship, and set 
the diaphragm in motion. An alarm bell would be rung on 
board, and the apparatus recording the extent of the 
vibrations would give the officer responsible a very good 
idea of the distance he was away from the obstacle. Practical 



Shipbuilding 343 

experiment alone can decide whether such an apparatus 
would behave as its inventor believes, but one must confess 
that the idea seems worth a trial. 

From devices of this sort one comes naturally to consider 
the precautions taken to ensure the safety of passengers, 
even though the parent ship may meet with a terrible 
disaster. With life-jackets, lifebuoys and flare lifebuoys, 
I am not here concerned, for their provision hardly comes 
within the business of the shipbuilder, but the question of 
ship-boats is a problem that calls for his most serious 
attention. It is a simple matter to join in the general 
clamour and say that it is monstrous for a ship to go 
to sea without there being adequate facilities for saving 
life in the event of there being a catastrophe. But are we 
willing to pay the price ? It is no use for us to try and 
put the burden on the shipbuilder. He is a business man, 
who will only carry on his trade if we can offer him a fair 
rate of profit, and if we, as members of the public, demand 
that he shall carry enough boats to take us off in the event 
of an accident, it is we who will have to make up the differ- 
ence to him in the reckoned number of passengers carried. 
And when we have got our boats, how often do you think 
the conditions at sea will be such as they were in the case 
of the Titanic and it will be possible to have them launched ? 

The shipbuilder, we must remember, has all sorts of 
problems to consider in constructing a ship, and if we 
hamper him unduly, and produce our perfect ship in 
England, I am afraid there is a danger that passengers will 
refuse to pay the price, and will go by foreign lines, so that 
the last state of the matter will be worse than the first. 
All sorts of suggestions in this connection have, of course. 



344 AH About Engineering 

been made, and in several quarters men have girded at 
the luxury of the liner, and argued that safety should be 
placed in front of luxury, and that the accommodation 
given up to swimming-baths and so forth might be far 
better handed over to a further provision of boats. The 
shipping companies do not provide these luxuries just for 
the pleasure of doing so, but they play their part in the 
shipping business no less thoroughly than do the ship's 
engines. If we say we are prepared to pay the cost of extra 
boats, let us ask ourselves honestly how often we take 
the simple obvious precaution of insuring our life when 
we travel by rail. 

Of the many ingenious contrivances suggested for 
increasing the accommodation available in case of a disaster, 
one is the idea of equipping the ship with a removable 
deck-house, so that the structure could be unbolted from 
the damaged portion of a ship, and then, when the rest 
of the ship went down, should float on the water like a raft. 
The idea is, of course, perfectly feasible, but I am not at 
all sure that if you had it carried into effect, you would 
not find that you had definitely weakened your ship as 
a whole. That is a danger that you have always to bear 
in mind, and for my part I think I would rather go to 
sea in a ship when the builders had so constructed her 
as to include every precaution that she should keep afloat, 
than in one where the utmost ingenuity had been displayed 
in devising means for saving my life when once I find 
myself tossing in the mid-Atlantic. 

However this may be, it is a source of legitimate satis- 
faction to every Englishman that his country does lead the 
world to-day in shipbuilding. There are many ways in 



Shipbuilding 



345 



which the truth of this could be brought out, but in no 
more striking way, I think, than by quoting to you, from 
Whitaker's Almanack, as I have Mr. Whitaker's permission 
to do, the list of the world's biggest ships, with the names 
of the companies by whom they are or have been owned. 



EVCLUTION OF THE STEAMSHIP ON THE NORTH ATLANTIC 

(i) Wood paddle-boats (3) Iron screw steamers 

(2) Iron ,, (4) Steel „ 

(5) Steel steamships with more than one propeller. 



Date Name of Steamer 


Owners 


Remarks 


1833 Royal William (i) 


Quebec and 


From Pictou (N.S.) ; 




Halifax S. N. 


first to cross the 




Co. 


Atlantic. 


1838 Sirius .. 


British and 


From Cork, first de- 




American 
Co. 
Great Western 


parture from U.K. 


1838 Great Western . . 


From Bristol, first 




S. N. Co. 


built for Atlantic. 


1838 Royal William (2) 


Transatlantic 


From Liverpool, first 




S. S. Co. 


departure. 


1840 Britannia 


Cunard Line . . 


From Liverpool, first 
carried British mails. 


i84g Atlantic . . 


Collins Line . . 


From New York, first 
carried U.S. mails. 


1856 Borussia 


Hamburg- 


From Hamburg, first 




American Line 


carried U.S. mails. 


1856 ■ Adriatic. . 


Collins Line . . 


Last sailing of Line. 


1856 


Persia {2) 


Cunard Line . . 


First Cunard iron 
paddle steamer. 


1858 


Bremen . . 


Norddeutscher 


From Bremen to New 






Lloyd 


York. 


1862 


Scotia . . 


Cunard Line . . 


Last Cunard iron 
paddle steamer. 


1845 


Great Britain (3) 


Great Western 


First Atlantic iron- 






S. N. Co. . . 


screw steamer. 



346 


All About Engineering 


Date 


Name of Steamer 


Owners 


Remarks 


1850 


City of Glasgow . . 


Inman Line . . 


First to carry steerage 
passengers. 


1858 


Great Eastern . . 


East and Aus- 


Paddle wheels and 






tralian S.S. 


propeller. 






Co. 




1868 


Italy 


National Line 


First Atlantic s.s. 
with cornp. er.gines. 


1869 


City of Brussels 


Inman Line . . 


First Atlantic s.s. 
with steam steering 
gear. 


1871 


Oceanic (first) . . 


White Star Line 


First with 'midship 
saloon, etc. 


1874 


Britannic 


White Star Line 


First to exceed 5,000 
tons, Great Eastern 
excepted. 


1875 


City of Berlin . . 


Inman Line . . 


First with electric 

light. _ 


1879 


Arizona.. 


Guion Line . . 


Watertight compart- 
ments floated her. 


1881 


Alaska . . 


Guion Line . , 


First " Ocean grey- 
hound." 
Sunk outside New 


1883 


Oregon (i) (2) , . 


( Guion Line 
( Cunard Line 


J York; everyone 
j saved by N.D.Lloyd 
Vs.s. Fulda. 


1879 


Buenos Ayr can (4) 


Allan Line . . 


First Atlantic steel 
steamer.* 


1881 


Servia . . 


Cunard Line . . 


First Cunard steel 
steamer. 


1881 


City of Rome {1) (2) 


Inman and ) 
Anchor J 


Fitted with three 
funnels. 


1884 


America 


National Line 


First and last express 
s.s. of Line. 


1884 


JJmhria, Etruria 


Cunard Line . . 


First with 20 knots 
speed. 


1886 


Aller 


Norddeutscher 


First triple-expansion 






Lloyd 


express s.s.f 



* Union Company of New Z&aXand' sRotomohana, 1,763 tons, was first 
ocean steel steamsliip, 1879. 

t Martello, 2,432 tons, of Wilson I^ine, was first Atlantic cargo triple- 
expansion steamship, 1884. 



Shipbuilding 



347 



Name of Steamer 



Owners 



Remarks 



City of New York 

(5) (I) 
City of Paris (2) 



( Teutonic ' 

( Majestic i 

Fiirst Bismarck 



La Touraine 



j Campania 
\ Lucania 



{ St. Paul 
\ St. Louis 

Kaiser Wilhelm 

der Grosse 
Oceanic . . 



Deutschland 

Celtic 
KaiserWilhelm II. 

Victorian 

{ Lusitania ) 
\ Mauretania-\] 



Inman & Inter- 
national 
American Line 



White Star Line 

Hamburg- 
American 
Line. 

Compagnie 
G^nerale 
Trans. 



Cunard Line 



American Line j 

Norddeutscher 

Lloyd 
White Star Line 



Hamburg- 
American 
Line 

White Star Line 

Norddeutscher 
Lloyd 

Allan Line 
Cunard Line 



First twin-screw ocean 

expresses.* 
First to exceed 10,000 

tons, Great Eastern 

excepted. 
f Designed as mercan- 
jtile cruisers. 
First under 6| days 

from Southampton. 

Record Havre to New 
York, 6| days. 

Lucania : highest day's 
run, 562 knots,Liver- 
pool to New York 
records. 

Largest express stea- 
mers ever built in 
America. 

Record day's run, 580 
knots. 

Balanced engines. 

First to exceed 
15,000 tons. 

Fastest ocean steamer 
to date. 

First to exceed 20,000 
tons. 

Largest express stea- 
mer to date. 

First fitted with tur- 
bine engines. 

Fitted with turbine 
engines. 



* Notting Hill, 3,921 tons, of Twin-Screw Cargo Line, came out so 
engined, 1881. 

t Maiiretania, largest and fastest to date. Record day's run, 676 knots, 
January 25, 191 1. 



348 



All About Engineering 



Date 


Name of Steamer 


Owners 


■ 
Remarks 


1908 


Laurentic 


White Star Line 


14,892 tons, recipro- 
cating engines with 
a low-pressure tur- 
bine. 


igio 


Olympic . . 


White Star Line 


45,324 tons. 


1913 


Aquitania 


Cunard Line . , 


47,000 tons, building. 


iqi3 


Im-perator 


Hamburg- 


50,000 tons, 880 by 98 






American 


by 59 feet. 






Line 




1913 


Britannic 


White Star Line 


Building. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

DOCKS, HARBOURS AND BREAKWATERS — AN ACCOUNT OF AN 
IMAGINARY VOYAGE, ILLUSTRATING SOME DIFFERENT 
TYPES 

The constniction of docks, harbours and breakwaters is 
one of the heaviest tasks that fall to the lot of the engineer, 
for the conditions of the work necessitate his dealing with 
the most powerful and destructive of the weapons that 
Nature keeps stored in her arsenal — ^the sea. It is seldom, 
if ever, that he attempts the work unless Nature herself 
has been prodigal of special facilities. If we look round 
our coasts at the numerous harbours sheltering our shipping, 
and at the breakwaters that in some cases are necessary 
to protect the entrance to the harbours, you will see that 
in most cases, if not in aU, the work of the engineer has 
been directed towards improving the natural facilities 
afforded by land-locked bays rather than creating facilities, 
when such did not before exist. 

From the mechanical side of the work, sea building is 
mostly a question of giant cranes, monster steam scoops or 
navvies, or diving beUs or divers. From the engineer's point 
of view the problem is one involving subtle mathematical 
calculations to determine what will be the pressure that 
his structures wiU be called upon to withstand, and how 
they can best be built to do their work. From the seaman's 
point of view the questions are the facilities they give for 

349 



350 All About Engineering 

entering and leaving, and the protection they afford in 
bad weather ; while it is the duty of the business man 
who promotes them to determine whether they can effectu- 
ally be made to pay by the volume of the traffic that they 
will attract. If I were to try and describe to you the diffi- 
culties of harbours and dock and breakwater construction, 
I should very soon find myself either repeating what I have 
already written in connection with bridge work and other 
subjects, or else branching aside from the main purpose of 
the work to speak to you of the wonderful machinery with 
which the docks are equipped for dealing with vast quan- 
tities of coal and goods that they are required to handle. 
I think I cannot therefore do better than follow an old- 
fashioned practice, and take you on an imaginary voyage. 
In this case our trip will be over country that I know from 
Burnham-on-Crouch to Southampton. The incidents I pro- 
pose to write of have happened to me on one occasion or 
another, but I am putting them all into the one voyage, 
as they will illustrate fairly well the character of the work 
that the engineer has to achieve in building his harbours, 
his docks and his breakwaters. 

It will be early in the morning when we get up — prob- 
ably before light — and after a fairly hurried breakfast, 
which will be none the worse for being a bit hurried, we 
shall hoist all sail, and slip our moorings, and make for 
the open sea. It will take us some little trouble to pick 
up the Buxey Buoy, lying off the mouth of the river, but 
when we have made that we shall have no difficulty in 
rounding the Whitaker Beacon and getting straight on to 
the road for Sheerness, where we shall spend the night, 
even though it does mean getting a little bit out of the 



Docks 351 

way. The grey dawn changes to full daylight, and as we 
are maldng across the Thames estuary, with a light wind, 
luckily for us, we touch bottom, for we have fouled the 
sand. This means running out a kedge anchor, and pulling 
back onto it as soon as the tide rises — a troublesome busi- 
ness enough, but nothing very serious, as the tide is rising 
and we have only a light wind. It would be a serious 
matter though if we happened to be a big ship, and it 
was high water, and at the present moment it is one of 
the objects of the Port of London Authority to dredge a 
30-foot channel from the mouth of the Thames to the 
locks to make the river accessible to all boats, no matter 
what the state of the tide. 

At last our little vessel lifts with the tide, and this 
time we are on our way between the street of lights that 
yachtsmen speak of as the Piccadilly of the Medway, to 
our berth off Port Victoria. We have plenty of food on 
board, and we propose to tie up to a mooring buoy for 
the night, just as many bigger vessels than ourselves would 
do in the Port of London, with a view to unloading their 
cargo into lighters that would come alongside. Our next 
day will take us towards the Forelands, but when we have 
got out well past Heme Bay, which is useless, by the way, 
as a means of giving shelter, a high wind gets up, and we 
decide to put into Margate to let the breeze blow itself out. 
It is two hours after low water, and one of us who knows 
that Margate dries at low water, has an idea that the 
entrance wiU give us water, and so we decide to try for it, 
getting a very nasty bump, and sticking on the bar out- 
side, with the waves threatening to break the back of our 
boat, until we have got off again into deep water, and the 



352 All About Engineering 

tide has flowed sufliciently to give us an entrance. Margate 
is a type of harbour that is of little use except for fishing 
boats. On the occasion we went in, I remember that one 
of the great wooden piles had suffered from collision with 
a barge that had blundered into it, which one of the insurance 
companies would have to replace. It illustrates a feature 
of harbours that the engineers try to get over either by 
dredging, as they have done at Dover and elsewhere, or 
by means of gates that are closed at high water, as we 
shall see for ourselves when we reach Ramsgate. 

Ramsgate has not got an over-good reputation, but for 
my own part I have never had any difficulty in entering 
it. There is the outer harbour with a great sand bank that 
dries at low water, and beyond it the inner harbour, where 
the water is kept imprisoned with a gate to work on the 
same principle as those we have seen at the Panama Canal. 
We may as well pass by Ramsgate as the wind is fair, and 
aim at making Dover for the night. Dover, as we see when 
we get near it, is one of the largest, if not the largest made 
harbour in the world. It has two great openings, and a 
basin that would hold the Channel Fleet, and, as we want 
to spend a day or two here, and it is low water when we 
arrive, we wiU run our boat aground — close to the entrance 
of a gate-protected dock, and go ashore for food. 

The harbour people are friendly to yachts now at 
Dover, and as we have only just returned to our boat a 
Uttle before high water, the harbour-master's tug gives 
us a hail, and offers to tow us to a berth. In the narrow 
waters of a harbour, steam is far preferable to saU, and 
we have no hesitation in accepting the tow, to find our- 
selves eventually close beside one of the Channel steamers 



Docks 353 

that has been lying up for a refit, and with our boat at a 
constant level night and day from the side of the quay. 
We see now the advantage of the gate-locked dock, for if 
we wished to discharge cargo, we should have no trouble 
from the rise and fall of the boat with the tide. Dover 
has had a fortune of money spent on it since the days of 
Henry VIII., one of the earliest monarchs to take an 
interest in the port, and it now has a magnificent Admiralty 
Harbour, 6io acres in area. It is fortunate though that we 
have gone into one of the protected docks, for if it comes 
on to blow, Dover Harbour only gives indifferent shelter 
to a small or even to a large boat, and we might as likely 
as not have found ourselves roUing about aU night, as I 
have done before now there, in pretty considerable dis- 
comfort. The harbour, as it is, took long years to construct, 
and the engineers in charge preferred diving bells to divers, 
for with the diving bells the men are able to work for longer 
hours, and are not so much interfered with either by currents 
or by rough seas. 

We are fortunate, when we want to start, in finding an 
easterly breeze instead of the prevailing westerly, for with 
the wind westerly against us we should have found a 
wicked sea running off Dungeness; but that obstacle is 
safely passed, and we start steering a compass course to 
the Royal Sovereign Lightship off Beachy Head, as we 
want to catch a sight of the Oceana's masts — which at the 
time of our voyage had not yet been blown up as an obstruc- 
tion to Channel traffic. The wind falls light, but we struggle 
on, meeting a French pilot and the Admiralty yacht among 
other boats on our course, until at last, when the sun is 
getting low on the horizon, we sight at once the masts of 

X 



354 AH About Engineering 

the Oceana and the Royal Sovereign Ij^ng beyond her. 
There is a nasty troubled sea boiHng over the shallow 
water in which the Oceana lies, and we are not sorry to 
bear away for Newhaven, which we make before dark. 
For my own part, I have always found Newhaven the 
easiest of ports to leave, and the hardest to enter, as when 
you come in you are extraordinarily apt to lose your wind, 
and drift aimlessly in the harbour. On the day I am think- 
ing of I was single-handed, and giving the tiller to a boy 
I picked up at the entrance — I was reducing sail, when a 
puff caught us, and he ran the bowsprit straight into one 
of the side piers, so that with a crash the bitts were taken 
clean out of the boat. It is a good safe place to leave a 
boat in, though, for there is a special yacht basin, but 
commercial vessels have to rise and fall with the whole 
range of the tide. The breakwater is a solid enough structure, 
giving good protection from the prevailing westerly breezes, 
and stretching out for about a mile to sea, the great draw- 
back to the place being that a bar forms over the harbour- 
mouth, preventing ships having a large draught from 
making the port except at certain times of the tide, an 
evil that will probably have, in the course of time, to be 
rectified by dredging, or by the construction of a specially 
designed system of breakwaters. We have a long way 
still to go, however, before reaching Southampton, and 
though the wind is a bit light, we must do our best, so 
after one night in Newhaven, we cast off, with the good 
wishes of one of the harbour-rnaster's men, to try at least 
to make the Isle of Wight. But when we are off Brighton 
it faUs a fiat calm, and there is nothing for it but to anchor 
with Brighton in the distance, and wait for a breeze or 



Docks 355 

a change of the tide to help us along. Both, as not infre- 
quently, come together, but only in time for us to make 
Shoreham, which, like most of the south coast harbours, 
is a tidal harbour. Here we learn for ourselves the real 
meaning of a tidal harbour, and the reasons why it is an 
advantage to be safe within the dock gates, for though 
when we berthed our boat we found it an easy matter to 
step ashore from her deck, when we return to her at low 
water we find her lying beneath our feet and already strain- 
ing at her cables. For us it merely means a scramble 
down on to the deck and a hurried slacking of our ropes, 
but for a cargo boat wishing to load or unload cargo, such 
shifting up and down proves a very troublesome business, 
and the tidal harbour is therefore, if possible, avoided in 
dock construction. 

Having made so poor a journey the day before, we 
make an early start the next day, and as the wind is light, 
we find ourselves forced to anchor in the entrance, being 
unable to make our way over the tide, and philosophically 
set about cooking breakfast. No sooner is the stove alight 
than a puff of wind comes, and it is a case of sacrificing 
breakfast to get on our way. And here we find ourselves 
inconvenienced by the fact that the engineers who con- 
structed Shoreham Harbour, though they have followed 
one of the recognised practices of harbour builders, and 
arranged that the current should sweep across the entrance 
of the harbour, rather than that it should make its way 
up and down the entrance, and thereby unduly retard or 
accelerate the speed of vessels making the harbour, were 
unable to avoid a nasty eddy that almost brings us into 
collision with the pier. We have had a narrow escape of 



356 All About Engineering 

breaking our bowsprit, our breakfast has been spoiled, but 
that is no matter, for we are out at sea again with a fair 
wind, too, for Southampton. 

We will take an outside course to-day, for the glass 
stands high, and we want to avoid the under water mole 
that has been built off Portsmouth to prevent a hostile 
fleet creeping up under cover of the shore in the darkness 
to deliver an attack. With a good following breeze, for 
the wind has freshened, we race up the Solent, passing the 
long line of steamers moored in this finest of natural har- 
bours, and passing the great docks and warehouses of 
Southampton, drop anchor just off Pickett's yard, the yard 
from which Mr. E. F. Knight sailed in his memorable cruise 
on the Falcon. 

In the short space of this voyage we have seen most of 
the various type of docks, harbours and breakwaters that 
have been built to subserve their different purposes through- 
out the country, and indeed, throughout the world. We 
need only use the knowledge we have got of the way the 
workmen and engineers construct lighthouses and bridges, 
to imagine for ourselves how these great works have been 
brought to a successful issue, the preparing of the founda- 
tions, the laying of the heavy blocks of material, the diffi- 
culties involved through the sea breaking in on unfinished 
works, and the elaborate organisation required. At the 
moment we are witnessing the progress of a rapid evolu- 
tion that in the middle of the last century was checked 
through the ill-fated career of the monster created before 
her time, the Great Eastern. Big ships, our merchants are 
realising now to the full, are cheap ships, and with the 
growth in our ships our harbours have to keep pace. 



Docks 357 

London is already making accommodation for such mighty 
vessels as the new Cunarder, the Aquitania, and as the 
competition between the different docks and ports means 
in essence the competition between the different railway 
companies for the capturing of the goods traffic, we may 
be assured that they will not rest until they have got them 
to the highest pitch of efficiency that human ingenuity 
can achieve. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE MAKING OF AN ENGINEER 

Poeta nascitur, non fit. The proverb may be true of the 
poet or not, but there can be no doubt that the successful 
engineer must be born with the taste for engineering. 
You can take two brothers, and give each of them a box 
of tools. One of them will turn out rabbit-hutches, or 
whatever his heart yearns for, true and well constructed ; 
the other will do little more than spoil good wood, having 
his angles all awry, his nails driven in crooked, and 
the result shapeless, untidy, ill-adapted to its purpose. 
There is the one class of mind that can see the drift of 
geometry almost at a glance, whereas the other type will 
find the problems a meaningless jargon of figures and 
letters to be learnt parrot-like at the dictates of an unsym- 
pathetic master. In the same way, there will be some who 
have almost the same sympathy for a machine as others 
have for an animal, and seem able to coax the most broken- 
down engine to do what they require of it. Decidedly, an 
engineer is born, not made, but those who wish to take 
up engineering as a career have to superimpose on a 
natural bent an elaborate training. 

Thinking it might interest some of you, now that 
you have read something of the work that the engineer is 
called upon to do, to know of the way in which he is made, I 
approached the Secretary of University College, London, 

358 



The Making of an Engineer 359 

for special information on the subject. The Engineering 
School at University College is by no means the largest of 
the engineering schools, even in London, but it was the 
pioneer in engineering education in London, and is still 
progressive and energetic, while it is sending trained engi- 
neers into all parts of the world; the teaching it gives 
furnishes a good illustration of the way in which the 
raw material of the man is turned into the finished 
product of the engineer. The first thing one has to 
realise clearly is that the theoretical and practical train- 
ing given in such a place as University College is not 
intended to supersede such necessary practical training as 
can only be properly acquired in the office, workshop or 
factory. In other words, engineering, like all other pro- 
fessions, if you get down to bed-rock, can only be learnt 
by actual practice under bona fide working conditions. 
The engineer, if he is to know his business, must go to 
the shops, as the great engineering works are called, and 
learn to handle a file and cut a screw, and get something 
of that intimate knowledge of craftsmanship in which the 
true workman takes a pride. 

But the true engineer is different from a craftsman — I 
think I might fairly write, is something greater than the 
craftsman — for, in addition to a knowledge of the engineer- 
ing craft, he must have a full understanding of the prin- 
ciples that govern engineering practice. And to do this 
he has to go through a wide training. Just consider the 
requirements that an institution such as University College 
demands of the men who wish to enter as students in the 
Faculty of Engineering. They have to show a competent 
knowledge of English, a knowledge of mathematics, includ- 



36o All About Engineering 

ing the binomial theorem and elementary trigonometry, 
and profess either a language and an elementary science, 
or two elementary sciences. In other words, the would-be 
engineer must be a boy who has passed through the modern 
side of his school at least with credit. With this as a founda- 
tion the College feels that it is possible to give a man the 
theoretical training which he requires as an engineer. 
Three direct branches of engineering are recognised — 
mechanical, electrical, and civil and municipal engineering — 
and no matter which the branch selected, a three years' 
training in the theoretical aspects of the subject is the 
minimum required. For the first year the training in the 
three is identical. Broadly, it may be said to consist in 
what from the school standpoint would be regarded as 
higher mathematics, in drawing and the application of 
graphical methods to mathematical and engineering prob- 
lems, in mechanics and physics, and in a study of metals, 
building materials and the drawing of machinery. This 
does not, you may think, sound a very formidable list, and 
I do not propose to bother you with the details of a full 
syllabus; but, to give you some idea that the engineer is 
expected to get a pretty thorough grasp of elementary 
scientific principles, I have selected the syllabus of one 
of these subjects — mechanics — for reproduction here. It is 
as follows : — 

Mechanics of Solids. — Uniform and Accelerated Motion 
of a Particle. Force and Mass. Composition and Resolution 
of Forces in One Plane at a Point. Moments. Centres of 
Mass. Forces acting on Rigid Bodies, including Couples. 
Conditions of Equilibrium, Work and Energy. Friction. 
Impact. Projectiles. Centripetal Force. The Simple 



The Making of an Engineer 361 

Penduliim. Simple Harmonic Oscillations. Moments of 
Inertia. 

Mechanics of Fluids. — Density. Pressure in Liquids 
at Rest. Centres of Pressure. Principles of Archimedes. 
Specific Gravities and their Measurements. Equilibrium 
and Stability of Floating Bodies. Metacentres. Pressure of 
Gases. Barometers. Pumps. Simple Problems connected 
with the Flow of Liquids. 

It is not until the second year that there begins to be 
a differentiation in the work that the students undertake, 
and even then such differentiation as there is is on the 
slightest lines. The men study specially engineering draw- 
ing and machine design ; under the subject, junior engineer- 
ing, they attend lectures on the various properties of 
materials, on the nature of stresses and strains, on the 
curious phenomenon of fatigue in metals, on the special 
behaviour of different forms of structure, on fuels, on the 
properties of steam and gases, on the elements of steam, 
gas and oil engines, and on the various theories that under- 
lie different machines and mechanisms. In this year, too, 
the students do a certain amount of experimental work in 
engineering. In his comments to me on the importance of 
this branch of the work, the Secretary of the College said : 

" The engineering laboratory is intended to provide 
systematic instruction to students and young engineers in 
the experimental methods which serve for determining the 
numerical data employed in engineering calculations, and 
also to familiarise them with the strength and other physical 
properties of the chief materials used in construction. 
The importance of such instruction is twofold. In the 
first place, the exact value of any numerical results derived 



362 All About Engineering 

from experiment and the limits within which they may 
be safely trusted, can be rightly estimated only by those 
who have some practical and personal acquaintance with 
experimental processes of the kind employed in obtaining 
these results. In the second place, engineers are continually 
called upon to deal with new problems, or problems in 
regard to which some essential data are altogether wanting, 
and thejT' are, therefore, very often compelled to make 
special experiments for their own guidance. It is obvious, 
however, that in such cases the probability of their obtain- 
ing accurate and trustworthy results will be much greater 
if their previous training has made them practically 
acquainted with the art of experimenting, and with the 
methods that have been successfully adopted by others 
in dealing with analogous questions." 

I asked him further to give me some information as to 
the actual machinery of which the engineering student 
was expected to get a thorough mastery, and he pointed 
out that as regards this general engineering, the student 
was expected to be familiar with all the different machines 
contained in the laboratory. Now, as is shown in the 
syllabus of the College, the laboratory contains a large 
testing machine (capable of exerting a pull of 100,000 lbs.), 
with specially arranged appliances for making accurate 
measurements of extensions, compressions, deflections, etc. ; 
an hydraulic accumulator (loaded to i| tons per square inch), 
from which the testing machine can be worked, connected 
with a special pump, driven by a gas-engine ; apparatus for 
drawing autographic stress-strain diagrams ; a 70-ton testing 
machine, specially arranged for compression and cross- 
breaking tests ; smaller testing-machines, specially arranged 



The Making of an Engineer 363 

for cement, transverse, impact, torsional, repeated load, oil 
tests and testing of long struts respectively ; a compound 
condensing steam-engine working up to 40 ind. horse- 
power, specially arranged for experimental purposes, with 
condenser, measuring tanks, indicators, dynamometers, 
etc. ; a high-speed 12 ind. horse-power compound engine, 
and two small engines, also arranged for testing ; a de Laval 
steam turbine, with condenser and Edwards air-pump ; a 
steel multi-tubular steam-boiler, with calorimeters for fuel 
tests, etc. ; a Babcock and Wilcox 100 horse-power water- 
tube boiler ; a refrigerator ; a gas-fired boiler ; a gas- 
engine working up to 8 ind. horse-power, arranged for 
testing purposes ; a petrol motor ; two standard gas 
meters and other fittings ; a gas calorimeter ; a mercury 
column and fittings for testing gauges, indicators, etc. ; 
brake dynamometers ; transmission dynamometers ; pul- 
someter-pump ; two air-compressors ; steam-pumps ; micro- 
photographic apparatus for the study of metals ; 15 b.h.p. 
motor, driving a low lift centrifugal pump ; apparatus for 
measurements of the flow of water over weirs, and the 
resistance of pipes, valves, bends, etc. ; machine tools, 
(lathes, shaping machine, drilling machine, planing machine, 
milling machine, universal milling machine, pneumatic tools, 
etc.), specially designed apparatus for conducting experi- 
ments of the kind just mentioned, as well as the necessary 
tools and appliances for working in wood and metal, pre- 
paring apparatus and specimens, along with standard 
gauges and measuring-apparatus. 

Apart from making tests with the machines contained 
in this formidable list, in addition, all students have to 
continue their mathematical work, and, further, to study 



364 AH About Engineering 

physics. The mechanical engineers also go on with graphics 
and electrical engineering, both practical and theoretical ; 
the electrical engineers do special electrical experiments, in 
addition to the other work, while the civil and mechanical 
engineers have a special course in graphics, geology and 
surveying. 

In the last year of their course there is a complete 
differentiation between the different branches of the subject, 
and it would take up too much space, and, I think, would 
convey very little more to you than I have done at present, 
if I were to go further into details. I will quote, however, 
to you a further comment about the education of the engineer 
that was made to me by the Secretary of the College : 
" There is," he said, " another important aspect of the 
training of the engineer, namely, the education other than 
the purely professional or technical training which he may 
expect to derive from a college course. At University 
College the Engineering Department is not an isolated unit, 
but is in close touch with the other Faculties of the College, 
Arts, Laws, Science, and Medical Sciences. In this way 
the engineering student is brought into contact both in 
this college course itself and also in the social and athletic 
life of the college with men preparing for other professions 
than his own. Such intercourse with men of other faculties 
and different pursuits cannot fail to be stimulating, and 
helps to prevent a narrowness of outlook which is the danger 
with men v/hose intercourse is confined to men of their 
own branch of study." 

In writing as I have done in the preceding pages, I hope 
that I may have brought before you some aspects of engi- 



The Making of an Engineer 365 

neering with which you were previously unfamiliar, but 
which are eventually destined to form the work to which 
some of you will devote yourselves. And if ever there 
was a life thoroughly worth living it is that of the engineer, 
provided the individual has the necessary aptitude for 
his task. In engineering, man strides upright into his 
rightful heritage. He is like Ezekiel in the vision, 
breathing life into the dry bones. Having lifeless matter 
for his medium, he expresses his own individuality by 
changing it into forms that under his direction mould 
or modify the face of the world. It is the engineer who 
is the great empire-builder, and it is primarily he on whom 
the country must depend both for its material progress 
and for its power to defend itself against attack. Great 
Britain has won a proud place among the nations through 
her engineering exploits, and the present looks confidently 
to the future to carry on and to further the tradition that 
has been handed down from the past. We can imagine 
ourselves to-day as stationed somewhere on the course of 
a torch race that has been in progress from the earliest 
times, and of which the end lies far below the horizon of 
the future. The torch that was handed to the first of 
the long line of runners has been carried towards the 
goal by countless engineers, and it is only the very few 
who have left behind them even the memory of their 
achievements. What lies at the ultimate goal none of us 
can tell, but each stage in the race carries us to a position 
where we have a greater mastery than we had before over 
the brute forces of Nature. The torch is carried forward 
by many others than engineers. Its progress is hastened 
by all who honestly attempt to do the best work of which 



366 All About Engineerlngh ,\ ^, . 

they are capable ; but the engineer is peculiarly fortunate 
in that he can see before him in tangible form the fruit > 
of his labours, and, if he has the eye of imagination, h 
can realise that it is the privilege of his profession t 
increase indefinitely the opportunities for a complete Hit 
The purpose of this book will have been achieved if i- 
has thrown some light on this aspect of engineering, : 
it has shown in part something of the great services tha 
the engineer has rendered, and is daily being called upo; 
to render, to his fellow-men. 



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